Dinnertime
Flames devour a feast of fallen branches,
robbed from the depths of the dusky forest.
A lick, a hiss, the quick fire dances.
In her dank deep cavern, a smoky kitchen,
in lichen woods, among the seeping rot.
Black cat eyes a smoldering cauldron.
Wild garlic and chanterelles found in leaf mould,
gathered herbs let loose their woody spices.
Tabby lays a brown rat on the threshold.
Shadows warp the walls, a figure takes a ladle,
From a bat-winged sleeve crooked fingers stir the pot,
Pointed hat askew, black as a demon’s nostril.
A twist, a pinch of this and that. A watchful owl,
A hum, a hymn, mingling. A leather wing
folded in. Long nail tapping a hungry bowl.
The Pond
From the sky, ducks come with rubbery
feet,
tip upside down for a beak full of
weed,
parlay with the fish.
On the agenda - tadpoles,
flies and gliders,
and who gets the crusts thrown by old
men.
Old men with rattling coughs,
meet every day on the bench,
share memories of air strikes,
rippling peaty water,
raising stuff best left
deep-rooted in mud.
Fish say, scales make good armour,
diaphanous fins
aid quick escapes,
dappled camouflage shelters
Piscean creatures
who winter at home.
The sky is a net, captures
reflections,
drops hailstones, wishing coins,
paper boats for drowning,
brings noisy creatures,
telling tales of great faraway oceans.
All talk and bursting bubbles.
Strands
and filaments
Contemplating
Einstein’s wayward hair
strands of tousled cogitation
u
n s c
r a m
b l i
n g
mental energy made manifest
a halo of s - t - a - t - i - c
electricity
outward reaching quantum leaps
revealing mathematical comprehension
of cosmic conundrums
conduits of wisdom deep-rooted in his
brain
threads of philosophy emerging
native intelligence
transformed visual
Games from an African Childhood
After breakfast our mother shoos us
outside to play. Already too warm
we cast jumpers wherever they land,
fling ourselves into the day.
Bare feet crunch a veneer of dried
dew,
leave prints, with crumbled edges,
feel cool, powdery soil beneath,
that will get too hot to walk on by
midday.
We scrape the ground with a crooked
stick,
draw a wide spiral, a witch’s
house.
Tiptoe along dark, chilly corridors,
lest the cowled one awakes.
Always taken by surprise when someone
yells,
Witchy’s coming! Run the whorl round and
round,
hearts pounding, to freedom, never
thinking to break
through the walls of our imaginings.
The sun is hot outside the witch’s
house
as we wander off to play another game.
The spiral lies flat, will be smudged
by day’s end
by dusty feet, dog’s
paws and bicycle wheels.
We play hide and seek, buy mud pies
with leaf money,
suck pollen from flowers, eat berries
off the hedge.
Forgotten, until after bath and bedtime
stories,
her hooded cloak surfaces to stalk our
dreams.
Death
is Petulant
I
was renowned in man’s dominion,
By
long tradition of shamanic rite.
I
led the wounded, sick, the young and aged,
Walked
all to the threshold, one and the same.
Was
a time I moved graciously among them,
Crowned
with legend of my noble vocation.
Ululating
women prepared my way,
A
wake of incense and keening.
No
longer am I spoken of in awed voices,
Now
I’m despised, they endeavour to cheat me.
Rival
my sovereignty, push me aside,
Cold
hearted, they would forsake me.
I
will not be vanquished, I have my pride,
I
brood in shadow, I sharpen my scythe.
Pam Muller was born in South Africa and had been living near Sneem, Co. Kerry, Ireland since 1978. Her poems have been published in Speaking for Sceine vols 1 and 2, Clear Poetry 2016, Lillipoh Anthroposophical Magazine, Boyne Berries 24, The Curlew – Betula 2018 and Crataegus 2019, The Haibun Journal issue 1,3,4. She won the Speaking for Sceine Poetry Chapbook 2014 prize and the original writing.ie prize in 2015. Her early poems appear in ‘Perspectives,’ 2005, a joint collection of poetry with her husband Etienne Muller and son Michael Muller - a self published anthology -www.askifpress.com. She is currently looking for publication of her first collection of poetry.
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