Impromptu and with Ease

Impromptu and with Ease

Westminster bells
partition through the air
to orient for place
a pacing in the hours

 and cockcrows wake
to first ordain the dawn
with much the surety
of rows of daffodils
unclenching in the sun

it is a gentle doing

it is not blast ordained
like thunder lightning storm
from heavy-lidded clouds
decreeing lines for rain

oh, let us dance…my love
impromptu and with ease
to relegate our days
in measured roundelay

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork: Vincent van Gogh
“Wheat Fields in Rain” 1889

Quick Bright Things

 

quick bright things
traverse thought
from outside in
to inside out

revealing implication
like apples ready … dropped
and gravity implied

they slip receptive
to our mind from
this is that to …
perhaps  … that is this

like rainbow shades
from sunshine rain
that prismed thought
so then was found … eventually
a frequency in starlight

yes, we think quick bright
from outside in and inside out
now … then … this … that

life is a quick bright thing
think this world
to the next

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork: Anonymous
“Flammarion” 1888

mead hall time of year

 

it’s a mead hall time of year with me
with cravings for smoked shadows
salt crystalled cod and clove mulled wine
crisp partridge and roast deer
the heart strong wild of bear…

for I must taste strong flavors
touch sweat from sharp stone walls
smooth splinters roughed in pine

drip tallow on my palm
watch dust motes drift in shafts of light
hear sighs of sea-born rain
gnaw shreds of happiness
from bones of memory.

Bonnie Marshall

Art by Julian Beever

soul I tear

 

these days my brain
is incessant solitaire…
it flips present moment
into bits and pieces
through a shuffled time

no matter…luck of the draw…
my flimsy card slip apprehension
plays sequential consequence of now
with all time wasted…scattered to a table
where a three dimensioned plane
is littered with distraction

oh…there is no damnation…none

somewhere beyond this sphere
that pulls upon me…holds me down
spreads immensity of space
where stars collapse and recombine
in chaos of a deep design
I cannot think to think

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Salvador Dali

death watch

Bijou…in afternoon is amniotic hatchery
dried parsley and old women’s shoes…
then evening steeps it to bean soup
sour laundry soap and moldy windowsills

Bijou…where rats…twitch…scurry birth
each way over under through…attentive
to faint hiss of cockroach mouthing glue
beneath pale skin wallpaper peel

Bijou…where brown bats sweep through
broken panes…strike insect flick…and smoke
white doves coo guttural on ledges…and night
shrinks wood to incremental creak

Bijou…copper stripped…stage rain warped,
house curtain velvet torn…all potent with decay
though I shall not gravely mourn for knowing
how previous gives way to new

and…I shall not be present for the wrecking
smash and crash, nor shall I recall its marquee
silhouette against an empty sky without seeing
as in dusty mirrors…my own exiting

 

Bonnie Marshall

Photography by Joey B. Lax-Salinas