Fireflies In The Garden
Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start.
Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.
Florida
The state with the prettiest name,
the state that floats in brackish water,
held together by mangrave roots
that bear while living oysters in clusters,
and when dead strew white swamps with skeletons,
dotted as if bombarded, with green hummocks
like ancient cannon-balls sprouting grass.
The state full of long S-shaped birds, blue and white,
and unseen hysterical birds who rush up the scale
every time in a tantrum.
The Sea Is History
Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?
Where is your tribal memory? Sirs,
in that gray vault. The sea. The sea
has locked them up. The sea is History.
First, there was the heaving oil,
heavy as chaos;
then, likea light at the end of a tunnel,
the lantern of a caravel,
Fireflies Die
Fireflies die
Stars wink out of existence
Butterflies fall from the sky
Rivers take the path of least resistance
And so do you and I.
.
~~~~~~~© by susan williams, April 9,2016
Night In The Gardens Of Port Of Spain
Night, the black summer, simplifies her smells
into a village; she assumes the impenetrable
musk of the negro, grows secret as sweat,
her alleys odorous with shucked oyster shells,
coals of gold oranges, braziers of melon.
Commerce and tambourines increase her heat.
Hellfire or the whorehouse: crossing Park Street,
Loneliness
When you are in the midst of darkness
Where loneliness engulfs your soul
Twinges of hopelessness felt
Chirping sound of crickets heard
The only sound to break the silence
Open the window of your heart
To see the magic in your backyard
The most fascinating view on earth
Hundreds of shimmering fireflies
The glowing lights in the dark
Fireflies
My fancies are fireflies, —
Specks of living light
twinkling in the dark.
The voice of wayside pansies,
that do not attract the careless glance,
murmurs in these desultory lines.
In the drowsy dark caves of the mind
dreams build their nest with fragments
When A Woman Loves A Man
When she says Margarita she means Daiquiri.
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window."
He's supposed to know that.
When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia
or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading,
Ode To My Socks
Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder's hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as if they were two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,
Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
Kin
FOR BAILEY
We were entwined in red rings
Of blood and loneliness before
The first snows fell
Before muddy rivers seeded clouds
Above a virgin forest, and
Men ran naked, blue and black
Skinned into the warm embraces
Of Sheba, Eve and Lilith.
A Village Far Far Away
Far, far away is my village!
Where fireflies of my childhood
Still glow in thick folliage
Of Pipal trees.
My lisping words
As they fell from my lips
Are still alive
On old, bent, dying stairs
Of the long-deserted house!
Leili
The serpents are asleep among the poppies,
The fireflies light the soundless panther's way
To tangled paths where shy gazelles are straying,
And parrot-plumes outshine the dying day.
O soft! the lotus-buds upon the stream
Are stirring like sweet maidens when they dream.
A caste-mark on the azure brows of Heaven,
The golden moon burns sacred, solemn, bright
Fireflies
A lake softly shimmering, in the evening's sunset glow,
Fireflies are dancing above it, moving swiftly to and fro,
Like a shower of confetti, they gyrate in a swirling mass,
Hovering over the surface, lightly humming as they pass.
Sparkles of light flickering, whilst they quickly skim, advancing
Across the water, each one striving to fulfil the art of prancing,
As if, in one mad moment, held fast in a rhythmic trance,
They become, totally mesmerized, by the magic of the dance.
Jet
Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth
and we soar up into the summer stars.
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish
and old space suits with skeletons inside.
While Someone Telephones
Wasted, wasted minutes that couldn't be worse,
minutes of a barbaric condescension.
--Stare out the bathroom window at the fir-trees,
at their dark needles, accretions to no purpose
woodenly crystallized, and where two fireflies
are only lost.
Hear nothing but a train that goes by, must go by, like tension;
nothing. And wait:
maybe even now these minutes' host
emerges, some relaxed uncondescending stranger,
In A World Of Poetry
Loved to write as far back as memory goes
Without any thought for a verse to compose
Poetic expressions of innate creativity
So admire the effect and it's sensitivity
Words dive straight to heart like an arrow
Flying through sky piercing at point narrow
Each word so concise of fit and precise
The Saddhu Of Couva
When sunset, a brass gong,
vibrate through Couva,
is then I see my soul, swiftly unsheathed,
like a white cattle bird growing more small
over the ocean of the evening canes,
and I sit quiet, waiting for it to return
like a hog-cattle blistered with mud,
because, for my spirit, India is too far.
And to that gong
sometimes bald clouds in saffron robes assemble
Koening Of The River
Koening knew now there was no one on the river.
Entering its brown mouth choking with lilies
and curtained with midges, Koenig poled the shallop
past the abandoned ferry and the ferry piles
coated with coal dust. Staying aboard, he saw, up
in a thick meadow, a sand-colored mule,
untethered, with no harness, and no signs
of habitation round the ruined factory wheel
locked hard in rust, and through whose spokes the vines
of wild yam leaves leant from overweight;
Banalata Sen
It has been a thousand years since I started trekking the earth
A huge travel in night’s darkness from the Ceylonese waters
to the Malayan sea
I have been there too: the fading world of Vimbisara and Asoka
Even further—the forgotten city of Vidarva,
Today I am a weary soul although the ocean of life around continues to foam,
Except for a few soothing moments with Natore’s Banalata Sen.
Her hair as if the dark night of long lost Vidisha,
Her face reminiscent of the fine works of Sravasti,
Dancing Fairies (Children)
On warm dark nights I think I see
beneath the weeping willow tree,
the fairies dancing in the grass
on tiny feet that fly so fast.
The music is the wind that blows
while fairies spin on bare tiptoes,
and fireflies jewel up the night
reflecting fairies in their light.