Some friends and I are pulling together some stories and poems for an anthology – I’ll share more details when we are a little further along in the process! I’d forgotten I’d written quite a few poems as well as my hanging out the washing poems! here are three with somewhat of a common theme:
i
A hanging moon
A sudden glimpse, a hanging moon, an apricot half eaten by the night, a sudden rising or falling in the dark.
Glimpsed across roofs and hedgerows, diminishing the street lights, it is coolly observant…
But glimpsed through trees,
(the woodland dark and full of sound,
of creatures of the night,) it seems
hooked or caught on branches.
Maybe it would seem still,
the earth tipped beneath me
as the world rolled round.
And then it’s gone,
– was seen through the open window,
but now it’s gone… swallowed, or hiding.
But glimpsed through trees,
its pale face in the water,
light through trees on water,
moonlight through trees on water,
the creatures of the night stilled,
it might seem the mere was where the moon hung,
an apricot half-eaten by the mere
ii
A glimpse of dark water
I’ve been thinking of a memory –
…or maybe it wasn’t,
of a pool – or maybe a pond,
which I used to pass, speeding along a motorway.
The pool was in a wood;
there was a clearing, and, in a flash,
I’d glimpse dark water as I passed
Something protruded from the water.
My memory sees it as a head,
a Roman or Greek or maybe not,
a man with stone curls
mouth agape,
blank, empty, eyes
Or was it?
Perhaps it was a concrete post,
which maybe, in the past, had held fence-wire,
or maybe a notice?
I can only remember it as a head.
I seem to remember a book…
There was a pond or pool in tangled wildwood.
Did I really? Or is that another misremembery?
I read a book called Mythalgo Wood,
Robert Hodstock, which held a mystery;
But searching now for information,
There is no mention of water woods light and trees,
only Mythalgo lakes,
no thing about a head…
Maybe it was a different book… maybe a film?
Maybe I should write of the possibility of this image,
the pool within a tangle of briars, undergrowth and trees,
the head of a statue protruding from the water.
Maybe I should write something differently.
iii
Light through trees on water.
There is something special about light through trees on water.
Sometimes you’re glimpsing the water through the trees.
Sometimes you’re walking by the water,
the light is coming through the trees…
Sometimes you’re walking at dusk,
sometimes at midday,
or through the stillness of a summer afternoon.
Sometimes you walk in the early morning,
Dull light or bright, or soft and misty light.
Sometimes from the surface, vapour rises.
Sometimes there are shadows on the water.
Sometimes the water’s carpeted with algae,
Sometimes dotted with lily pads –
– which lift and wave or dip or merely float.
Sometimes the pads are dotted with bright buds.
Sometimes there’s just a flash of water as you pass the trees,
A glint.
Sometimes there are strange shapes,
The shapes of things beneath.
Once there was a head,
A statue body hidden, below the surface…
… or was that a dream,
…or was it a stump of a concrete post,
a post I imagined to be a head ?
Or was it nothing but a dream?
There is something special about light through trees on water.
Lois Elsden 