Please note that the poems and essays on this site are copyright and may not be reproduced without the author's permission.


Sunday, 22 November 2009

"flat round..."


.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Tropaeolum-majus%28Lotus-oben%29.jpg

Tropaeolum majus: photo by Michael Gaspert, 2005



flat round
nasturtium top
plate leaves with
gleaming pin
head size beads
of last night's
rain water still
balanced on
them

pushed up
on long thin
green stems to
white morning




http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Regentropfen_Kapuzinerkresse.jpg

Tropaeolum majus: photo by Viola Sonans, 2005

9 comments:

human being said...

so beautiful!

and 'white morning' made me think for a while...
through the contrast between white and green, i could see how we gain color little by little after we are born... we should grow...

TC said...

The still cloudy sky after rain, tentatively clearing, undecided, not yet blue... to be grown up into by something green. With its top opening like a lotus.

Anonymous said...

This is what I love about your words Thomas. Your words always dance two ways in my brain. I am thinking, sometimes the 'tango' sometimes the 'waltz' or it could be the 'Foxtrot' or 'Salsa'
Few words, but clear images in my mind's eye. The mark of a good writer; I would say.As well as always having that purrrrrrfect close of her curtains. And I have learnt a new word *dance* 'nasturtium'

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

tom,
I've been reading your poems and looking at your photos lately -- amazing clouds in crepuscular, this one especially close to home (Bolinas). . . . here's mine from this morning --

11.23

red-orange clouds on horizon above black
trees, red-tailed hawk calling on branch
in foreground, sound of waves in channel

having remembered, a sound
takes place as event

which is, whatever one may
think, its effect is

whiteness of sky to the left of point,
wingspan of pelican gliding toward it

steve

human being said...

wow!
what a picture you painted... i could see and feel it... and i could understand how beautifully you were talking about the purpose of our growth... by the image of that lotus...

a poetic weather report... both about the climate of the world around us... and the world within...
:D

TC said...

SarahA,

I do love a nasturtium. The "sshhh" in the word seems to gentle it so. And the flower, so common here, yet so fine, has a bright delicate water colour loveliness:

nasturtium (with eucalyptus)


Stephen,

Lovely poem, thank you. As to "home," oh how we do miss that landscape. This one comes from it:

One Morning in December


Hb,

Inside/outside, where is the borderline?

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,
Beautiful poem -- I remember seeing you running those Mesa roads years ago (the 70s) when no one else was running there it seemed. And now, once when I ran up (from where we were living across from tennis court) around the sewer ponds, seeing a great grey heron standing there in the field, motionless. . . . these last few days there's been an egret walking around in the sunlit field just across my fence (the field east of Overlook, looking across at Tam ridge and sky above it. Thanks. Here's this morning's poem --

11.25

first grey light in sky above still black
trees, red-tailed hawk calling on branch
in foreground, sound of wave in channel

where from past to present
‘projection memories’

thought, transitory detail,
view familiar object

silver of sunlight reflected in channel,
tree-line green slope of ridge above it

TC said...

Stephen,

Your poems bring back a flood of recollection. This:

silver of sunlight reflected in channel

reminded me of the "silvery" night-sound of surf, wafting across the mesa, mingling, on foggy evenings, with the distant night-sounds of a Whistle Buoy.

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom, more of that in today's poem ("silver of sunlight" seen while surfing out there yesterday, first three lines seen and heard just now. . . .

11.26

red-orange of sky beside shadowed black
trees, red-tailed hawk calling in left
foreground, sound of waves in channel

therefore going after that,
take place in ground

blue like this, everywhere,
transitory after all

silver of sunlight reflected in channel,
cloudless blue sky to the left of point


Steve