Tag: poetry

audio, blog, Pat Aitcheson writes, poetry

Doldrums

pataitcheson22
rowboat-alone_Quangpraha
Quangpraha via pixabay

listen here: 

The old storm has abated and the next, not yet arrived.
Did I throw out my oars in despair, or were they ripped from aching hands at the height of the tempest?
Adrift, bearing unknown, the lighthouse blind and dark,
clouds obscure the sun and hide the stars alike.

I drift

rudder splintered, compass shattered.
I hold my breath, not daring to inhale the leaden, empty air
no land in sight.
The waters shift below, yet no kindly current arises, lost here in the doldrums of life.

A heartbeat, then another, the only timepiece in this forgotten space
an unreliable machine, prone to error
incapable of solving the riddle, the longitude of my soul.
Aimless, unmapped blankness branded on my skin.

disconnected

drifting

 

audio, blog, Pat Aitcheson writes, poetry

Under a crying sky

pataitcheson22
red tulip petals
AnnaD via pixabay

listen to this poem: 

See there, the sunny uplands
of what could be
see here, the barren wasteland
of what came to be

the space between, under a crying sky
is brim full of splintered dreams, of lost hopes
and bitter grains of disappointment
of what will never be

blog, Pat Aitcheson writes, poetry

All love in a day

pataitcheson22
boat-golden_Soorelis
Soorelis via pixabay

At dawn we played at love, sly smiles and heated glances, butterfly touches on my arm, a thousand possibilities.

In the morning we laid in love, wrapped in hot kisses and whispered words, a thousand silent candles our only witness as we rode the waves.

As the sun reached its zenith we declared our love, and our future lay before us with fair wind and full sail.

In the early afternoon we multiplied our love, but it scattered to the winds. The storm almost broke us.

In the later afternoon, we gathered up our love, patched and made new, then set sail again, wiser.

In the twilight we made our love a safe harbour, when our strength was almost gone.

And in the evening we prepared our love to go where we must follow, when sunset comes.

Now only I remain in lonely night.
But still our love has always been my light.

 

audio, blog, Pat Aitcheson writes, poetry

Imperceptible

pataitcheson22

a poem

sunset-orange_kordi-vahle
kordi-vahle via pixabay

Listen to this poem:  

A certain shade of vulnerability
Dark smudged beneath a weary, teary eye
Faint fingerprinted hip where passion turned angry
A shadowed brow, but not like this
The place where things slid from binary
Into uncertain gradations

When did day surrender, when did light flee?
Night now, but let your eye adapt
And catalogue dim fractions
Pupils stretched wide until all the darks are one
Swallowed ghostly whole entire by dusk
Obscuring every boundary and line

You think you’ll know when
You think you’ll see it
But the shift is imperceptible.

first published in Poets Unlimited on Medium, 10 January 2018