Three Poems and Five Tanka Poems by Wendy Webb

 

Selkie of these Sovereign Shores


I left my selkie skin in Fingal’s cave,

the pipes of organ music whipped a storm.

My infant feet trod harshly over rock

and winter howled to loose this foreign shore.



Most selkies sail to landwards for seven years,

to find a mate and hunker down ashore.

Forgetting where my native sands might lead,

I breathed in depths of Mendelssohn’s fine wail.



Would anyone remember me, becalmed

beyond sweet Staffa (blessed Iona’s stones

raised up heavenwards with monks and angels).

I left so fast, flotilla from their deep.



I learnt, by aching feet, to joy in mountains,

to leave betraying whispers from the islands.

I would not go back home while light bewitched me

to float the drowning skies of heaven’s best.



If angel-dust’s a palm in God’s own shadow,

my voice shall echo-wail round rocky coasts.

Playing salmon-streams of melting Springtime,

this heart’s voice rose the further south I swam.



The broad of wherries enchant by reflection,

white sails of hulls (all feathers or carved timber)

flotilla me to dreamscapes of lost lochs.

Don’t banish houghmagandie; it’s my home.



My placed sitooterie’s for dragonflies,

until time shades to Northern dancing lights.

Then flesh shall winter beyond the Forth of Firth

and whisper last goodbyes to my fair mate.



Remember me, when shadows shorten; light

returns, so slowly, melting past Arthur’s Seat.

Sometimes the North Sea’s storms intone via whalesong,

then vapour passes across a solstice moon.



I’ve many names, and tails, for I’m a selkie,

no merman’s safe offshore while I flip free.

Preserve my fine domain, all elements mine.

Take care. This land’s a precious turtle afloat.




Five Tanka



Optimistic Spring,

saunters into the garden

jolly with blooming.

Leaves crackling brown, soon to fall,

may replenish soil



Grey clouds rage and faint

beyond the far horizon.

Dump silver linings

out beyond the crystal sea.

Hope rising to butterflies



Endless grey day Spring

storms into Summer’s heatwave

or shivering green.

There’s hope enough to sit down,

search pain-drained colour; and skies



Vibrancy, slow fall

and heat enough to sip tea

outdoors while birds call.

Prepare for lengthening shades

of unplanned Winter’s absence



Hope for loud robins

unaware as blackbird-dark,

to kill us with joy

amid mud/fog/drizzle/blow:

until we hygge indoors




Symmetry at Eaton Park (Villanelle)

2015/07PUBLD Star Tips (108)



Horse chestnuts overarch the path with form

of classic architectured mastery.

Summer blooms in beds where weeds conform,



unlike this megalomaniac storm

brooding over boat pond’s simplicity.

Horse chestnuts overarch the path with form



and how perambulations of flowers perform.

Forgive super-exuberant nature’s complicity!

Summer blooms in beds where weeds conform.



Cathedral-proud brash flowers rise to swarm

their children’s children; laughter; honesty.

Horse chestnuts overarch the path with form,



reflecting past and future’s seed or corm,

airborne by clocks of timed consistency.

Summer blooms in beds where weeds conform



to Victorian grandeur, life’s margins, seasonal warmth.

There’s joy and peaceful synchronicity:

horse chestnuts overarch the path with form,

summer blooms in beds where weeds conform.




At the End of the Rainbow

[In the style of Dylan Thomas]

2013/11/PUBLD, Grief that's always dying/WWB



In the long ago forever,

when I was young and free

and my autumn-golden hair strands

danced like waves on gleaming sea.



Then my voice was loudly singing

through the rattling of dull chains,

as love’s itch kissed brash and freshly,

embracing hope’s remains.



Oh, what long ago for-never

captured spring’s Persephone:

in her sweet-step doom of flowers

faded bright in memory.



Will she brush against next season’s

sentient melodies’ embrace?

Where this winter chills her lively

to a joy-found faith-deep place.



Lover, cherish inner silence

of the damned breath’s coldest skin,

till those melting fleshly earthworks

blade and bud their wandering.



One day to shoot sky-daisies

in an ashen storm-blanched plain’s

darkened fulsome depths of richest

brightened dust-steps of remains.



But for now let us remember

Pluto’s rage of loved ones; gone

to that long ago arced rainbow

treasure chest where dreams belong.

Wendy Webb: Born in the Midlands, home and family life in Norfolk. She edited Star Tips poetry magazine 2001-2021. Published in Indigo Dreams, Quantum Leap, Crystal, Envoi, Seventh Quarry, The Journal, The Frogmore Papers) and online (Littoral Magazine, Autumn Voices, Wildfire Words, Lothlorien, Meek Colin, Atlantean), she was placed First in Writing Magazine’s pantoum poetry competition. She devised new poetry forms (Davidian, Magi, Palindromedary); wrote her father’s biography, ‘Bevin Boy’, and her own autobiography, ‘Whose Name Was Wit in Waterr’ (title inspired by Keats’ grave in Rome). She has attempted many traditional forms and free verse. Favourite poets: Dylan Thomas, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Burnside, John Betjeman, the Romantic Poets (especially Wordsworth), George Herbert, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Mary Webb, Norman Bissett, William Shakespeare, the Bible, and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.Current poetry collection: LOVE’S FLORELOQUENCE, Wendy Ann Webb, Amazon.co.uk.

Love's Floreloquence: Amazon.co.uk: Webb, Wendy Ann, Meek, CT, Meek, CT, Webb, Wendy Ann: 9798372967595: Books