Do you remember the time we went looking for a ring I dropped?
You followed me blindly, peering under tables and chairs
-in a room bathed in twilight.
Knowing all along, I must have dropped it in the streets.
But still you helped me-
fatigued, crouched on small legs
wearing your grin and a defiant
sense of adventure.
That’s love.
Salmon pink splurge over liquid blue.
A tail that flutters like an eyelash,
sinking to the grass in petulant smoke.
Copyright © 2015 by Kate W J White (All Rights Reserved)
It was the remnants of a chilly winter
on the cusp of spring,
the freighter ship glowed
a lonely rusty red.
I weaved my arm through yours
seeking warmth from coat sleeves
as it sunk into a darkness
of forbidden murky greens.
Benevolent acknowledgment of
the spirits of the ocean,
a petrified creature;
as the shrill cry of seagulls
wrestled the breath of the wind.
Copyright © 2015 by Kate W J White (All Rights Reserved)
Northumberland, England
Rocks tumble over one another
like greasy sun soaked crabs.
Tender lapping waves
slip over their forms;
a distant echo
and through dying embers
clouds drag pale light
entombed in a blanket of mist.
Copyright © 2015 by Kate W J White (All Rights Reserved)
This is part of a “Snapshots of a Year” series I am doing, each month I will write landscape-inspired poetry taken specifically from my 2015 calendar. Feel free to leave a comment below 🙂
“Here is my Secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”
Le Petit Prince- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
It sticks out of the bookshelf like a shark’s tooth;
gold leaf with shades of chrome, black.
Too loud, too at ease in its own skin.
Lined up like an army, battered and
dog eared volumes traverse the shelves.
I’d fought wars through those pages,
I had ridden through midnight trains,
soared over cities, learnt life’s bitter lessons.
A snow shaker of timeless dimensions
sealed with glue and trapped in paper walls.
Bending with the weight of secrets.
“I have chosen for you.” he says.
“The book that will change your life.”
He points to the hardbound cover creeping
its way out of the shelf,
inching its way closer-
willing me to pluck it down like a ripe apple.
It looks confident.
The book falls with a resounding thud
into my eager hands.
It is heavy, its skeletal structure
digging into the grooves of my palm,
making a home for itself
like an affection seeking cat.
I glance at its neighbours,
wispy and insubstantial like the smoke of dreams.
With the sound of their hushed murmurings
I turn the first leaf,
as the first four words fall from my lips….
Copyright © 2015 by Kate W J White (All Rights Reserved)
I reach through;
gravel crunching like
a gingerbread trail,
past the water’s surface
of glazed ice-
the leaves breathing
frost to a cloudless sky.
I feel the rush of heat
on my skin;
flames that creep like ivy,
black smoke spitting flecks of orange
belched forth in midnight blue
and I watch;
watching it burn.
Copyright © 2014 by Kate W J White (All Rights Reserved)
You walk among
the haggard battle scars
of mountainous peaks;
of midnight forests
with black cotton stitches
like crows feet in shadow
and ragged crags that weave-
through the wilderness
in undulating waves
of white thread.
Copyright © 2014 by Kate W J White (All Rights Reserved)
We sit under flags
that dangle like octopus legs-
paddling the air like
astronauts lost in space.
Copyright © 2014 by Kate W J White (All Rights Reserved)
They weave fingers of evergreen,
a canopy to shelter
from the bitterness and cold.
Guardians of nature they close their ranks
as soldiers of symmetry;
the sharpness of colour, blinds me
through the camera lense
unfiltered-
capsules of red as paint dripping
floods the forest
in bursts of joyous stain.
Copyright © 2014 by Kate W J White (All Rights Reserved)
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