Day 2 of 30: Our GloPoWriMo 2019 prompt for today is to write a poem that transforms the natural world into an unsettled dream-place and resists closure by ending on a question.
"Stonehenge"
Summer solstice
Double-decker bus
Just in from Glastonbury- maybe Wimbledon
Parking lot crowded
Sightseers with
Audio phones pressed to their ears
Muted and servile, cattle-like, gawking
Touching the ropes and signs that warn:
“Do. Not. Touch. The. Stones.”
The sandstone ring, the bluestone, the sarsen
Carved four thousand years ago and
Off limits to everyone but
The Druids.
********
Across Salisbury Plain
Lonely sound of wind
Whips
Raven’s shadow circles close
Stone posts carved from boulders lugged in from Wales
Rise against the storm
Drums beat loud to Celtic tunes, caped figures dance,
The toes of the troubadour shoes point and curl,
Velvet hoods, tall staffs, a single hand extended,
A gust moves the long beard of Merlin,
In the yellow sky a message: an incantation from the
Woman warrior with outstretched arm and the long
Red braid.
What is her prophesy?
********
Turn off the phone. The car. The lights.
Forget the tele.
Light a fire.
Circle round.
Beat the drum
at Stonehenge.
Call in the powers of North, South, East, West.
To Salisbury.
Listen closely.
Press your ears to the stones.
What do they have
to say?
~by Kat Shamash ©2019 Kat Shamash
Image "The Morrigu, Phantom of the Celts" by Howard David Johnson
Comments