Saturday 29 March 2014

PLANT LIFE


PLANT LIFE

First is time.

Then a spatter of white

lichen like bird droppings

dotted on the hot black lava rocks.


In more time

Always time

The lichen curls and colours

coalesces, spreads slow and greedy,

silver, yellow, green and gold.


 
There is time.

Always more time

Thick stems, waxy leaves,

moist-bodied survival systems,

will shrink and hide and wait.
 

Again there is time.

Always time. More time

A dome of delicate Fibonacci sticks

netted over a tenacious lace of roots

retains a green oval leaf and a tiny yellow star.

In time it will be a green half sphere covered with faint blossom.
 

There is more time

Always time and then more time.

The silky, insidious grasses lie down humbly

ground-pressed by wind, seeded heads nodding, nodding.

Grass is life for humans who have so little time.

Sun-blackened, broken-backed by the meagre harvest,

their empty stomachs rage and ache. Soon they will be without time.

As for man, his days are as grass: As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.”


For a time.
 

Ruth Hartley Lanzarote March 2014



Wednesday 26 March 2014

VOLCANO




VOLCANO



Small cones of flesh

beached on the sand.



The colours of clay

sun-fried, sun-dried,

raw umber, raw red,

burnt ochre, burnt orange,

brown and carbonised black.



Gut chambers

rumble, bubble,

protest, threaten,

vent shit-sticky lava

in white bathroom craters.



Smoked discs on top

cover eyes and brain

that marvel and see,

want to know more,

understand to care.



Small cones of flesh

asleep on an volcano.



It stood up and shuddered,

stopped life with a shrug.

It has no feelings,

no sense of its power,

it does not mind or watch

when we explode and burn.

Monday 24 March 2014

LANZAROTE


 
 
LANZAROTE



An ocean of black water

deep and world-wide,

its edges tear into

a thin white frill.



Black lava-dust hills

rise up and over

a white scum of houses

at the water's edge.



Birds skimming waves

spin on a wing-tip

from white to black

then black to white

stitching the sea's hem.



White sails curve

half of a parenthesis

hollowed by black winds

out of an empty sky.



So much dark, deep eternity,

such a little edge of life,

the fragile mind clings,

twists and breaks.