Passing Colours – Martin Potter

 

Rail journey

Thickset windows fix

Fleeting landscape green-chill

Outside carriage warmth

 

A winter sun’s

Tentative intense

Strikes brushwood bark-bole

Bounces lemon curd

 

Off the trees’

December slumber skin

Insinuating dazzle

Lichen imbued light

 

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Martin Potter (https://martinpotterpoet.home.blog) is a poet and academic, and his poems have appeared in Acumen, The French Literary Review, Eborakon, Scintilla, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Poetry Village, and other journals. His pamphlet In the Particular was published by Eyewear in December, 2017.

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August 2, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: carriage, colours, creative, creativity, journey, landscape, lichen, light, Martin Potter, movement, nature, poem, Poetry, rail, sun, travel, trees, UK, view, warmth, windows, winter, writing Leave a comment

Lichen – James P. Roberts

 

Covers gravestones

Erases names and dates

 

Pale green

& white growth overlapping

 

circular shapes expand

with every year

of neglect.

 

Rain

will not wash away

the stain

only spur

further growth.

 

I expect

someday to wear

a mantle of lichen

like a warm coat

sheltering me

from the cold, dark dirt.

 

 

James P. Roberts is the author of five previous collections of poetry. Recent work has been published in Weirdbook, Mirror Dance, Rosebud, Sand Canyon Review and Zingara Poetry Review. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin where he haunts Little Free Libraries and has a passion for women’s flat-track roller derby.

December 15, 2019December 15, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: coat, creative, creativity, dates, elements, growth, history, James P. Roberts, lichen, mantle, names, nature, neglect, poem, Poetry, rain, shapes, shelter, time, US, WI, writing, years Leave a comment

Riparian zone – John Grey

 

The bends, the lichen-coated rocks,

dissipate the current

so that it spreads out sideways

to the banks,

before continuing downstream.

 

Along the margin,

bees drift in and out

of purple harebell lobes,

bright white arrowhead,

patches of southern iris.

 

For a hundred miles,

a modest greenery

of riffle and grass,

muskrat hole and wildflower,

pilots the flow,

unhurried and content.

 

A selfless strip of life

conjoins these waters.

Without it,

the river draws no breath

 

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. His work has recently been published in New Plains Review, Stillwater Review and Big Muddy Review, and is upcoming in Louisiana Review, Columbia College Literary Review and Spoon River Poetry Review.

October 31, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Australia, bees, breath, colours, content, creative, creativity, current, drift, flow, flowers, John Grey, lichen, life, margin, nature, poem, Poetry, river, rocks, US, water, writing Leave a comment