The harvest moon
When summer loses its pace with life
A time of quiet contemplation
Autumn
And fragrant hills
Beyond
Have you seen the harvest moon?
The moon that is full
Before an autumnal equinox
Before summer ends
When flowers die
Trees are gold
Russet, yellow
And when the smell
Of burning wood
Lingers in the air
Have you seen the harvest moon?
Near a shady wall
A rose once blossomed
Fair and tall she grew
And through a gap
Her tendril crept
To dream
Of what might lie
On the other side
She breathed out
Her fragrance more and more
It was no different
On the other side
Still she grew there
Near the shady wall
Just as she would
Scattering her fragrance
Forever and a day
Until her life ebbed away
The evening sun
At the close of day
Spirit of the apple tree
Smile down on me
Ethereal apple tree
Old and gnarled
Stands with ancient boughs
Burdened down with fruit
High up
Tremulous arms
Out splayed beseechingly
Spirit of the apple tree
Old and gnarled
With your drapes of gossamer
Webs of the spider
Sails swaying in the breeze
And your old bark
Marked and stained
Do you have a memory
Old tree?
What would you say?
That you have seen in your day
Old tree?
Spirit of the apple tree
Old and gnarled!
Always room for
There never is.
One book replaces another,
even with two inches between them
when one falls they all fall.
It’s what I dream of:
endless rows of books,
refugee families housed
videos of cats.
Happy elbows.
There never is.
One book replaces another,
even with two inches between them
when one falls they all fall.
It’s what I dream of:
endless rows of books,
refugee families housed
videos of cats.
Happy elbows.
No time to meditate
on gravity’s dumb force;
you’ve gone to ground,
faster than a thought
can pass from toe to brain,
that instant when a shoe
is lifted (but not quite enough)
to graze the root, the rock,
that unseen stick-note
telling you that time is up
and you are down
again
It’s nearly here…
Every day during October a prompt will be posted on the website and all you have to do is write a poem in response. Ahem. If you’d like to share your drafts and receive group feedback on your work then post your poems as follows:
With pale blue wings
Seated on my wall
I went right up to it
I observed it
And I even spoke to it
But not a movement
Did it make
It just stayed right there
It remained for ages like this
In observation of this lovely sight
I opened the window
On this night
But in the morning
It was gone
And I never came across
My moth-friend again!
One by one people slip away
like grebes in quarry water.
You gutter in the wind
and pass, without expression,
the bleeding yew and the
windmill on the hill.
Our best picnic place.
You have folded in on yourself.
You are not the you,
you used to be.
The topography of your
hours has flat lined.
I pass your memories sliding down
as mine force their way up.
Would I swap with you?
A day of stillness versus
a day of swirling fire.
But the fire is me
and the quiet is you
as you fall like a grebe
into quarry water.
Paul, can you here me Paul?
Yes, I can hear you.
Sing for us Paul.
A voice cut through the border
and plunged under grinding wastes of water
in an armoured copper cable
to sing in London where people sat cosily jumbled.
His craft spoke of the raging moon
that hung over men swaying in a tree.
His angle on truth butted at equilibrium
and pecked through walls of silence.
It was a song of unrest,
a call to listen
and to look into corners
at bloodied hand prints
that would not be
washed away.
His black listed voice faded
and red, blond and black hairs rose
in a standing ovation.
Between 1955 and 1956 a transatlantic telephone cable was laid with a submarine repeater which was an amplifier that boosted the signal at intervals. This new cable improved the quality of communications and brought prices down. In 1957 Paul Robeson gave a concert to an audience sitting in St. Pancras Town Hall whilst he performed in New York using this new technology. Tickets for the concert sold out in an hour. He was banned from singing outside of America because of his civil rights activism.