Shipwreck and Woman in Garden

Some poetry I've been working on lately.

Shipwreck

Upon the folded quilt of wrinkled hills

Into the creased and the dimpled hollows there

Where rusted lullaby drains in curved rills

Where crying cranes their mournful dirges share

Sunlight, the floating gold and fiery dust

Has now made this its last and gentle home

And in the brunneous moss-and-bracken crust

Seeks shadows in the mazes of the loam

The swelling and the felling of the sea

A mouth that weeps forth pale and foamy spume

Loping beneath sullen waves and debris

A ship into its dank, cavernous tomb

With all aboard from mastheads fore to aft

Clinging with all their lifeblood to their craft

 

Woman in the Garden

 

Like the face of a round, starkly dangerous clock

Opening wide to speak of times dire

Her eyes open now, gleaming white, gleaming black

 

Full of a dangerous time

 

Her lips are pale, blood-red her evening frock

Her hands are long and white like cranes

Her hair spills in rivulets down her arching back

 

Full of a dangerous rhyme

 

The clock, cruel and pitilessly looping round

Counting down the minutes, precious few

Until the bell of midnight must finally ring

 

Full of a dangerous chime

 

Looking out from beneath her torn gown

Legs long like leaping dolphins, she rises

And folds of crimson a hiding place bring

 

Full of a dangerous rhyme

 

The gate opens like a maw, wide, dark

And stepping forth a long-legged man

Strikes the lady; the red flower falls into the mud

 

Full of a dangerous crime

 

She knows now that her time has met its mark

She weeps like a late ocean, far too late

Alas, the tears are water not, but blood

 

Full of a dangerous time