SATELLITE AND BIRD

SOUNDS HEARD IN DARKNESS

THE INSIDE OF ENOUGH

BLACKBIRD'S DREAM

UNSUNG

I didn't rise for Matins

In anything but heart

Leaden limbs under the duvet

Tracing the restless

Leaf-lace on the nets

In bruise-bright ambulance blues

Hurtling through the oven of night

Pale ceiling fanned with someone

Else's tragedy

I held their panic up against

The small hours' looming

Wideness

Listening past the siren

Past the unsprung dawn

For unsung mystery and mercy

MOTHING MOTTEPHOBIC

Small Dusty Wave (Idaea seriata)

Mottephobia: the irrational fear of moths.

My phobia of moths goes way back, to this childhood incident.

Now I'm working on overcoming my mottephobia through my camera lens. Through curiosity. Through my stubborn determination  to refuse to be deprived of moths in my life forever more.

This summer, I'm even starting to do mothy things with sheets, torches, sugaring and wine ropes I never ever dreamed I could steel myself to do. Even opening a window with the lights on in the evening has been a no-no for most of my life!

The following poem squeezed its way out on such an evening of lying in wait for the whisper of wings.

Female Bee Moth (Aphomia sociella)

Let's sit suspended in this burning dark
Moths mutter and barge in watch-spring arc
Kidnapped wings
From nectareous things
Sheets running rivers of fluttering light
Retina flexes to flatten night.

Still heart-deep primal phobia
Shrieks headless panic under buddleia
I tense transfixed, pinned corpse on card
In the melting dusk of my own backyard
They blunder through gaps 
Between stratus and star
To the flames of our fears 
To wherever we are.

White-shouldered House Moth (Endrosis sarcitrella)

NIGHT LIGHTS

Stargazers, Moon watchers, insomniacs and anyone living city or suburban life these days will relate to my tongue-in-cheek poet photographer's rant on modern light pollution! Hope this brings you a smile!

BUCK MOON DUSK

Arianrhod's silver wheel

Caught in nets of purpled cloud

Birch suffused with shiver of steel

Glass castle and ring of flame

Keening over the spinning souls

Locked to earth by a chain of tides,

Sunset bruised the horizon rolls,

Never static and never tame

Now the velvet has bound her eyes

Kissed her lids with its violet shade

Night's birth is the day that dies

Whispered colours her fabric's frame

Speeding on through the radiant dark

Starflake piercing insomnia's gloom

Kirtles herself in rainbow's arc

Free of border and without name

(Joyce Barrass 2016)

Photographs of the Full Buck Moon rising over Wickersley Wood, South Yorkshire, UK and sunset in the western sky on the hottest day of the year, taken by the author and viewable in full HD over on  Joyce's Flickr where you can always find her photos of the Moon, clouds, birds, wildlife, natural world, passing aircraft, Yorkshire scenery and lots more of her passions and peculiarities. Her historical novel "GOATSUCKER HARVEST" is part of her lifelong lyrical lovesong to her native Yorkshire roots and is available from Amazon in paperback and as a Kindle ebook.

Thanks so much for visiting!