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Untreasured.

Small creases
Coursing clear cheeks
Where lines now sit.
Forgotten as that moment-
An occasion undateable.
Shiny glaze dulled in spots.
Through smudged decades,
That face; gaze straight,
Not beautiful nor otherwise,
Expression un-fazed.
No sense of placement ahead
In social feed, or on the web
For scrolling past,
Thumb-dibbing a ‘like’,
Or trite little 💓.
No comments awaited.
Familiar yet apart,
Reflection on a slant,
Glancing off time’s waters.

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In the woods by the mill

The shadows are lengthening.

And with this, comes a dampening 

In the breeze that’s now sliding

Down the dusk-flanked hill.

 

Over our kisses, trees whisper

The wood’s warning that crepuscular

Trysting calls forth danger

Unmentionable still.

 

I see goosepimples springing

On your freckled arms, wrapping

My passion, that’s cooling

With the darkening chill.

 

Gold-green which shone on our embraces

No longer dapples our now watchful faces

From the old path’s bends it races

And in the gloaming grows a thrill-

 

Of dread at what could now be coming

With the darkness that is thickening

Between us and what’s listening,

In the tumbledown mill.

 

Your head flicks right, to footsteps unseen.

Oh my love! We start to a hidden scream.

Or laughter? We’re frozen, as those in a bad dream

Only dreams cannot kill…

 

 

 

 

And now

Today

I saw a white feather and birdsong filled the woods.
After I cried we hugged and purple flowers bloomed
from the blood behind my eyelids, closed against loss.
I was The Fool with her sack of valueless goods,
Coloured stones and poems wrapped in bright cloth,
Hiking along a path of optimism
Eyes to the clouds, your heart under my boots.
And now it has cracked and I’m falling through.

 

Doubt

Poets and writers we may seek to be-

But do we then lack authenticity

When each pearl’d drop of life is pooled away

And re-cast in cold ink on another day?

‘True’ living and recording will never quite chime,

Experience twists for the bard for her rhyme.

Summer Moon Rise (Tanka)

Strawberry Moon rises

To the honeysuckle breath

Of a sultry dusk.

Rose and Jasmine twine sweetly,

Soft evening laughter ripples.

 

~Polly Oliver (2018)

Moth – a sonnet

 

Defined by its fatal desire for more-

Antennae ragged, blackened with the bright

And white-hot kernel at the candle’s core,

This soft-winged, heat-drunk warrior of light,

Charmed and enflamed by phototaxic lust

Re-gathers all its primitive life force

To smash its quivering body to grey dust

In its addiction-led, predestined course.

And just like them, though my own wing tips burn,

With junkie-esque predictability-

To your relentless, boiling sun I turn,

Flying towards destruction willingly.

Ash in my hair, my mouth, my bleeding eyes,

Dying to live within your fire the prize.

 

Polly Oliver -2018

 

Photo by Egor Kamelev from Pexels

Mask

 

Bit of a  ten minute-er , based on current mood.

Polly x

There’s nothing like old friends, or kids

to kick you hard, under the ribs –

evidencing, as they do

how much things change, and how much you

and smiling past selves have been lost

as ghosts; evaporated like tears.

Pretending to be happy turns you grey.

The mask will have to crack one day.

The desperate mirth of Comedy’s smile

tilting to Tragedy’s broken wail.