Category: poetry

  • casting runes — 05aug26

    ehwaz
    sitting statue still
with sunken hollows
after crows came for eyes—
unmoving even still

stepping over cooling ashes
following night songs
leaving the worn behind

    A poem prompted by a randomly selected Elder Futhark rune.

    Today’s rune is ehwaz, which has a core meaning of “horse”. A horse is often associated with journeys, travel and movement. By extension, it also implies symbiosis with another living creature or fylgja (guardian spirit), and the rune is associated with loyalty or trust. Any undertaken journey may be spatial, emotional or spiritual.

    Please visit my Elder Futhark pages at sceadugenga.com for additional interpretations of the runes based on multiple references and personal reflection.

  • shards, iii

    Like red hot iron, this is best swallowed whole:

    these obsidian blades
    of semicolon days
    where minutes languid
    drag, reeking of
    sour sweat & saudade

    scant souls slendering
    silent tombstones
    sighing under
    a sickle moon

  • shards, ii

    Close your eyes reading this one; it will help.

    never will you ever find me
    never will i ever find you
    twin nightboats
    on the River Dream

    still: kohl eyes, seek—

  • shards, i

    In singsong:

    don't dare imagine
    don't dare dream
    don't dare be strange,
    dirty or obscene

  • tall naked trees

    dead souls, we
    wraith through
    tall naked trees
    under winter iron
    to our cold fires
    waiting

    someone whispers
    the name you wore
    before you were born

    perhaps, even,
    it was i

    recall, rejoin these
    dead souls, we
    that may seek again
    as we wraith through
    winter's tall naked
    trees

  • listen

    listen:

    were it that you could
    hear these bones
    being etched in
    scrimshaw behind
    my age-cured flesh

    what might you see
    if you could hear?

    a great horned owl
    scrying mantic in
    the deepening night?

    peat bog perfume
    rising from what shadows
    are left to remain?

    what peels bark
    behind blackthorn?

    i gather flint
    in scarred hands
    along with ash and
    charcoal black
    to scratch louder
    runes anew

  • the hanging man

    it is passing strange
    how a turn of word
    tugs at puppet strings
    whereas an elegant mask
    might only hang

    it is always the
    whispered words
    with the most draw
    as we dance at
    the edge of a tether
    aching for more

  • mortal tethers

    tonight, i give over
    surrender to loam & peat
    let mycelium feed while
    slumbering between
    bile & bog, briar & weed
    betwixt both thorn & stone

    slipping deeper,
    even mortal tethers
    may break

  • nothings

    everything given
    under foxfire & green
    to bramble gate thorns
    into the ghost of me
    leaving behind Nothing
    no longer even dream

  • evermore

    'could i, a slip between cracks
    would i find to the narrows'

    'go sleeping on those hills,'
    she suggested, offered, obliged
    the moorlands her finger drew

    'lichened stone to rest a head;
    a blanket of peat to cover you
    and heather to tincture your sleep'

    i did as bid, grew antlers thorned
    as i slumber a top that tor
    i fell betwixt place and moor
    having given self to evermore