Another trio of poems recently shared via Black Bough poetry’s TopTweetTuesday.

This time, playing with and exploring the search for that elusive ‘perfect’ pebble, using ‘banshee’ as a verb and the seemingly absurd notion of fighting butterflies (for an extra bit of fun, try singing the first line of ‘Love on the breeze’ to the tune of The Cure’s ‘Inbetween Days’).

Pebbles on the shore

Heads bent, eyes skim the shingle, 
sorting through tide scatterings:
rainbowed, ovoid lumps, jagged shards, 
worn brick and glass – we are helpless then, 
before the wet wink of the imagined
prize, radiant as it summons us to stoop 
and pick and palm our own unique, 
elusive beauty, hidden from every other seeker, 
a slick fragment of time, slipped amongst 
junked chunks of sea-grey aggregate and grit.

And for all we may suspect this notion 
is flawed, stopping in one place, in fact,
to sift, would be more productive –
who can truly resist supposing that 
when we pass, walking shaky lines, 
our fated rock will be there, lying
on the beach, waiting for this moment?

Awake

Desolation banshees out 
and through the house, 
memory sent scrambling 
for her trousers: 
What – the hell – was that? 

Panicked synapses fumble 
for a trace, at last recalling, 
with a frazzled smile, 
nothing but a fox, 
turning city inside out.

Love on the breeze?

Yesterday two points of light erupted, 
from long grass, twirling, in a frenzy, 
as though breaking from the mother-shaft, 
in a reckless bid for freedom, 
until I noticed bodies and those bright 
specks became butterflies
 – a pair of Speckled Woods, 
desperate to collide.

What I couldn’t tell, 
is whether this was dance or fight: 
the most carnal aerial combat 
ever seen, or a frantic courtship,
brutally conducted 
– weapons, slender wings.