THE NEVER-NAMED

FOUNTAIN

WATER WHISPERS

TREADING WATER

Photo credit and thanks to Matt Hardy from Pexels

BELLA AQUA

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Spill. Splurge. Swilker.

We splosh. We slop. We slurp.

O Bella Aqua! Wondrous water!

Today we keep you prisoner,

Aerate you not by thrilling plunge

Cascades where you can shimmer,

Shiver, shatter, shine in rainbow,

But by brutal blasts of CO2

In plastic bottles a-fizz with death,

Drunk by our drunken

Toxic passing foibles,

Seething our sludge of poison

Back to Mother Ocean.

As river we pollute you

With our casual cast-off,

Our heaving landfill

Shores up sea defences

Against the tide of taint

We've boiled and brewed,

Seeping and leaching

Through the thirsty land.

Casual we jerk the tap

To drain your flood and flow

At every blindfold whim of wastefulness.

Bless your primordial founts and fonts,

Your chuckling wellsprings,

Mirrors of genesis,

That we once honoured

As our liquid life,

Vital as breath,

We lapped with silence on our lips.

Instead we have abandoned

Your secret sacred surging

To nodding donkeys

And the fissures of frack.

WELL DRESSED

Someone said you were 

Well dressed.

I tried to see it in you.

I gazed down into your depth,

Your mossy brickwork,

Your echoing hollow of plipping dark.

I hauled up your pail, hand over hand,

Thirsty for a drink.

I made eye contact with myself 

In your lichen circled mirror,

Coins thrown, making wishes.

I whispered a blessing

Over chaplets of daisy and cinquefoil,

Withering woodruff woven

Sticky Willy,

Woundwort.

You had spelled your own name

In stitches of myosotis,

Instead of the local saint's.

Chlorophyll clouds dried

On boards of salt and clay,

Straws strewn on water,

"Don't fall in!"

A dove flustered out of the copse

A startled naiad

I grabbed your rail,

Recovering my balance,

Blinded by your shimmer,

Newly baptised,

Baby fresh

Bathed.

ALL HER FAULT

ALL HER FAULT

--a poem inspired by a glimpse of Thirza, heroine of my WIP "Cloudhover Solstice"--

Tries to stand

Soles rippling

Beneath the boil

Basso profundo boom

Inching purchase

On sea stamped sand

Plunge forgotten

Now razor balanced

Between sink and scull

Spray rainbow halo

Stinging eye and tongue

Frothing sodden

Tries to breathe

Less and lower

Lower to mute

Her eye discerns the heart

Between two swan necks

As breakers seethe

Molten gold

In the eye of the tide

Breaks her buoyancy

In the undetow

She grasps for his hand

The earthed root hold

Tries to rise

Wings wrung with salt

Drag to inertia

Anchor to halt

The cliffs' billed cries

Are all her fault

© 2016 Joyce Barrass