Amputated Moon

                            water-soaked paper cyan paint drips from a brush soaked by blue rain  

Pamela Olson, 6/28/09

For One Single Impression’s prompt “Blue Rain” 14 comments

a blessing of clouds gathers under a white hot sky a mention of rain not in the forcast hope is here in this fleeting coolness in the transparency of the moment in the gray underbelly of a passing cloud

Pamela Olson, 6/24/09

2 comments

you would have understood me had you waited instead of the backward shuffle out of the room trying not to move too fast you heard my whisper within the pen scratch on the roughened paper the letters forming a cell where you might languish you mistook my looks frightening and fierce as a cruel captor luring you toward the waiting pen and page the door remains open an invitation printed on the paper come and let us speak together join pen, paper, and hand until the poem is born Pamela Olson, 6/23/09 For Carry on Tuesday’s prompt “You Would Have Understood Me” by Ernest Dowson 5 comments

light lies along your side like a pillar of salt from some faraway desert where the sun cuts sharp   here is a land of boundaries shadows and light locked in place you stand there unmoving within a forest of stones   In my dreams I am at your side part sunlight part whisper do you hear me   I will weave myself between your molecules of water and salt of darkness and heat   Differences dissolve between you and I let us assimilate becoming something new  

Pamela Olson, 6/21/09

  For One Single Impression’s prompt, “assimilation” 15 comments

the lantern light throws its shape-shifter magic from deeper in the barn   breathing in the darkness breathing out the light as night passes away   hay bales change their shapes to pyramids or coffins   barrels become wishing wells or towers of Babylon   the man and woman standing in the door exhaustion hangs   from their faces like old suits hanging in an attic   do they see the magic that has worked tonight through the lantern’s light   or is all simply an evening spent in an ordinary barn tending a mare and her foal  

Pamela Olson, 6/16/09

  For Carry on Tuesday’s prompt: “A lantern light from deeper in the barn Shone on a man and woman in the door” from The Fear by Robert Frost 5 comments

this wall of shadows bricks of light mortar of darkness cast upon a dusty ground   inconstant made engineered by a star’s rising in the morning only to fall at night   planted on this orb constantly spinning leaning upon its axis tilting north then south   where shall I lay my head within these insubstantial walls where day and night lie shadowed and lit   bury me within these walls cool and still in soft shades rain unfettered and breeze blowing soft upon me  

Pamela Olson, 6/14/09

  For One Single Impression’s prompt, “Walls” 13 comments

the book was thick and black

covered with dust

like gray moss on a pathway

 

words frozen in paralysis

bowing and creaking within lines

trapped on the yellowed pages

 

binding cracking and groaning

refusing to be opened

determined to remain hidden

 

around a bend in the path

or behind the large oak

heavy with Spanish moss

 

the whispers twine themselves

through the branches

and the shut pages

 

their sibilance winding through the binding

sliding along the dusty cover

of the thick black book:          listen

 

listen to the poetry

that lies within the faint voice

trapped and hidden inside this book

 

Pamela Olson, 6/9/09

 

For Carry On Tuesday’s prompt,

 “The book was thick and black

and covered with dust. 

Its boards were bowed and creaking”

from Possession by A.S. Byatt

 

8 comments

 

the petals wait for a brief breath

to lead them into a graceful dance

 

the rain has gathered in the clouds

hanging heavy in the pewter sky

 

a drop falls into the pond

another onto the white petal

 

here is the intersection

of breath, rain, and petal

 

here within this simple frame

lies the sureness of life

 

Pamela Olson, 6/6/09

 

For Poefusion’s prompt, Monday Mural:

Magnolias by Meri Arnett Kremian

 

For One Single Impression’s prompt:

“Intersections”

 

24 comments

there are sleeping dreams

and waking dreams

shadows lie in sleep

shading my day awake

 

what seems is not always

as it seems when a boding

descends across the grass

and touches the planted stones

 

weighted down with ballast

stones across my back

ropes cut into flesh

another stone against my heart

 

anchoring my feet

to the unsteady ground

waves of grass blades

bend in breezes of loss

 

marbled stones

numbered one by one

rest in the ground

an abacus of death

 

count them and touch them

tallied and scored

they show the cost

of divisive war

 

fallen bodies and fallen hearts

touch them and count them

one by one by one

here in this waking dream

 

Pamela Olson, 6/4/09

 

For Carry on Tuesday’s prompt:

A Ballad of Boding by Christina Rossetti

“There are sleeping dreams and waking dreams.

What seems is not always as it seems.”

 

6 comments

lightning hands reach from east and west

prying open the book of the sky

the stiff binding crackles as glue breaks

and stitches stretch apart

 

the storm has written tonight’s story

pages filled with foreign grammar

lines of mysterious script

its tale is dark and short

 

in the fast flickering illumination

speed-read the phrases

written by the wind and rain

streaked across the yellowed pages

 

decipher the thunder’s punctuation

for the starts and stops in the story

hurtling your scanning eyes

toward the end of the book

 

then the last echo of the storm

retreats toward the distant horizon

lightning flashes its hands out

closing the book shut

 

Pamela Olson, 6/1/09

 

6 comments