Three Poems by Jan Coulter

 

Our Demise

 

Night stars rend the

moon in two,

with ragged

sword of experience.

 

Her edges raw and

sharp are bleeding

a sad melody; a

refrain I have known.

 

Yet her beauty sings

through, her light,

barely dimmed by

her sorrow, which leaks

 

from wounds, of

rape and plunder, of our

land, for profit, for greed;

for our demise.

Poignant Silence

 

There is a deep pain, within a

desolate hollow, where a

heart once lived,

 

before it was given away,

without words to describe,

either presence or absence.

 

Words such as void,

Cavernous, bare.

Emptiness sticks to the senses.

 

Smell of rose turned to musk.

Taste neither sweet nor savoury, but

acrid, caustic, burning.

 

Hear the echo of

poignant silence as it

throbs inside,

 

aching chest walls, where

ribs expand and contract,

against a vast vacancy . . .

 

Perhaps, my heart will be returned,

to my time weary soul.

Perhaps, I shall befriend this quiet,

 

Perhaps, there is peace within this silence.

War

Buildings tall, bombed and burning,

flames like daggers,

stab the walls, lick her wounds,

yet, she bleeds.

 

Below this agony, shoe deep in ash,

a solitary child swings,

on a red and yellow swing set, oblivious

to the destruction, the desolate, the damned.

 

Plumes of smoke, black as ink,

exhale in deadly coughs, into

the sky, the day, the death toll, the dark; and

a red and yellow swing set.

Jan Coulter is a poet living in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, Canada. Writing from the heart, Jan weaves landscape into words, with a considered approach to detail. She is a retired cabinet maker and chair seat caner, having made fine furniture in The Arts and Crafts tradition for over 30 years.