Mark Scrivener Poetry Blog No. 4 Dusk to Dawn (Vice Versa)

DUSK TO DAWN

This poem is a "gimmick", that is it is constructed to fit an unusual pattern. It is "palindromic" in a sense. It is not a real palindrome like "A man, a plan, a canal- Panama" where the letters mirror each other. Instead the sounds of whole words mirror each other in the two sections of two verses each.

As a result the lines rhyme at the start as well as the end. Note it is the sounds and not the spellings of words that I have used. The one bit of "cheating" is the transference of the short "ah" sound from away in the first part to afar in the second. The natural phenomena of dawn and dusk are also in a way a reversal of each other. This piece was very hard to create and as a result I don't think I'll ever write another quite like it.

DUSK TO DAWN

(Vice Versa)

Rays of sun now burn and shine.

Haze of red, horizon's line,

Gleams and glows now far away,

Beams with dreams dissolving day.

So it comes and this is born-

Glow with dusk reversing dawn.

Light of hours now goes to dark,

Night removing daylight's spark.

...............................................

Spark lights day, removing night.

Dark too goes, now hours of light

Dawn, reversing dusk with glow.

Born is this and comes it so.

Day, dissolving dreams with beams,

Way afar now glows and gleams.

Line horizons, red of haze!

Shine and burn now, sun of rays!

Mark Scrivener Poetry Blog- The Wizard's Wonderful Watering Can

THE WIZARD"S WONDERFUL WATERING CAN

This poem was originally written for a younger audience. That said, I believe it is harder often to write a good poem for younger people because you cannot use complex ambiguous metaphor or erudite language for effect. I also feel that a good "children's" poem should also be able to appeal to older audiences. Nor do they have to be necessarily less profound. This poem was inspired by the remark of a friend about an elaborate hand-made copper watering can and was also influenced by Yeats' Song of the Wandering Angus i.e. The silver apples of the moon / The golden apples of the sun. 

 THE WIZARD'S WONDERFUL WATERING CAN

A wizened, wise, old wizard went, with speed,
With his wonderful, watering can,
To water a patch of withered, old weed.

The sprinkle and sparkle of water-drops ran
Like tears down the leaves: brown, withered, and old;
And wherever he watered the weeds were spun
To sprouting, green plants with flowers silver and gold,
With flowers from the moon and the sun.

His pupil saw this wonderful spring
And thought he'd do the same sort of thing.

He went with the wonderful, watering can
And watered some flowers, not weed.
He thought, "This will be fine, indeed!"

The sprinkle and sparkle of water-drops ran
Like tears down the flowers, yellow and red;
And wherever he watered the flowers were spun
Into withered, old weeds with leaves grey and dead:
The cold of the moon, the heat of the sun.

Mark Scrivener Poetry Blog- poems and backgrounds Lizards

LIZARDS

The grass skink or common garden skink is a tiny lizard (8-9 cms long) often found in gardens in Australia. They feed largely on insects and like to soak up the sun. Once giant lizards ruled the earth, yet these relatives of theirs hide from birds. The poem speaks to relativities, not only of size but also perception.

LIZARDS

Small grass skinks creep,

from lands of gradually-dissolving leaves,

and rest in quiet,

scales iridescent in the light,

so silently soaking in heat;

sides swelling and shrinking as they breathe,

as if entranced or half asleep,

yet they're alert to shadow fall.

Are they

the microcosmic cousins of

earth-shaking thunderers, long gone all?

As if wrong-telescoped by time, some say.

But what of sizes anyway?

Within their garden world they're great

swift cockroach fighters of the reptile state.

And what awareness have they of our size?

We are not scaled to minute eyes.

I wonder if it is the same for us,

worlds within the one.

When shadows fall how shall we guess

what friendly watchers stand between us and the sun?

Mark Scrivener Poetry Blog No 1 Treewind and Storm

                        TREEWIND AND STORM

How far have we come in modern civilisation from any real relationship to the world around us? That is in respect of our feelings, our hearts and imaginations and a sense of living relationship to the events of nature around us? These are the questions that prompted this poem- Treewind and Storm. It was originally written after experiencing an arising storm on the top of a hill at Mona Vale on the Northern Beaches of Sydney decades ago. 

TREEWIND AND STORM

I walked one night

far from day walls,

onto the top

of a street-scarred hill.

Under me dwindled

lines of dead lights:

silence of still

fragments of city,

quietened by darkness.

Yet where I stood, hill-high,

the wind tore through dark sky:

as ever-free, arousing force,

a celebration of life's source.

Fresh on my face,

tingling my skin,

it swayed the dark, bare trees,

endowing their dead branches

with strange and living gestures.

It shook the roadside bushes,

endowing their thin leaves

with a million, whispering voices;

and distant thunder gave the very sky

deep tones of muttering discourse.

And the cloud-sullened vastness

gleamed with storm joy.

I felt my limbs

strong like the treewind.

I felt my heart

sing with the skywind.

I felt my blood

pulse with storm power;

my being bound to boundlessness.

But beneath slunk sadlit streets

where time was passed in dullness;

where we live like ghosts,

close-hidden from night,

in trance to the spell of the talking,

hypnotic screen's pale light.