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.

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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

Desire – Nigel F. Ford

 

From the top of the window down the climb of the sky is cobalt. As the eye moves down it, scrutinising and searching, it comes up against a straight-bottomed, moustache-shaped cloud that stretches across the entire width of the view.

The lightening drop of the cobalt travels down behind the cloud and emerges on the other side as very light cerulean.

This description covers the view from the perspective of top to bottom / bottom to top.

The diagonal perspectives reaching from the width of the view and forming the flat floor of the triangulating lines that meet at the end of the thus formed long thin triangle at an elegant spindly television mast perched on a small white square block atop an angular building.

The spectator assumes this to be the top of a lift shaft or flight of stairs that opens onto a roof terrace behind the square block perched on top of the triangular building.

If that is a roof terrace, reasons the spectator, then I would like to buy that house and live in it.

The spectator then frowns.

On the other hand, reasons the spectator, I could simply be pleased that such a place exists and leave it be.

 

 

Born in 1944, Nigel F. Ford wrote his first radio play aged 14 (refused). Jobs include reporter for The Daily Times, Lagos, Nigeria, travel writer for Sun Publishing, London, English teacher for Berlitz, Hamburg, copy writer for Ted Bates, Stockholm. Had a hand in starting the Brighton Fringe in 1967. He started painting etc. in 1983 and has regularly exhibited in Sweden and on the Internet in various publication. In addition, several magazines in UK and US have been kind enough to publish his writing. Such as Nexus, Outposts, Encounter, New Spokes, Inkshed, The Crazy Oik, Weyfarers, Acumen, Critical Quarterly, Staple, T.O.P.S, The North, Foolscap, Iota, Poetry Nottingham, Tears in the Fence etc. He is now trying to produce & direct one of his stage plays.

November 20, 2017November 20, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: flash fiction, ProseTags: building, cloud, colours, creative, creativity, desire, eye, fiction, flash, humanity, nature, Nigel F. Ford, perspective, place, shapes, short, sky, spectator, story, terrace, view, window, writing Leave a comment

Sunset Paths – Robert Pelgrift

 

To paint a sunset sky above a bay,

one lightly brushes a blue field on white,

then brushes pink trails from an overlay

of plaited rose clouds on blue twilight.

One paints a thin blue strand across the bay

where watery shapes of yellow and pink rose

mirror the rainbow curtain whose array

ascends behind, in colors that transpose

the waters’ hues; its pink rose valance shades

the sunset clouds above a yellow haze

that thins to bright white sun upon the strand.

On the near shore, one paints blue shrubs and blades

of blue beach grass to mark a twilit maze

of winding darkening paths of blue sand.

 

 

Robert Pelgrift practiced law in New York City for many years and is now an editor for a legal publisher, working in New York City.  His poems have been published in various anthologies and in The Lyric, The Rotary Dial, The Galway Review, The Foxglove Journal and The Waggle.

November 10, 2017November 10, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: art, bay, clouds, colours, creative, creativity, elements, mirror, nature, NY, painting, poem, Poetry, rainbow, Robert Pelgrift, sand, shapes, sky, sun, sunset, twilight, US, writing Leave a comment

How I arrived at who I am – John Grey

 

When I was seven,

my father bought me an airplane kit,

something to put together

with glue and guile

and instructions translated directly

from the Korean.

 

He did not help me in any way.

And I proved useless at the task,

would have set fire to the little

balsawood pieces

had I been allowed to play with matches.

 

There are other projects,

other details,

but they all amounted to the same thing.

My hand and my eye

were as Sanskrit is to the Ford Edsel.

 

So I grew up

surrounded by piles

of shapes and images,

and the encouraging cry of,

“Go for it, kid.”

 

That’s why I sat in the corner

building things that always fell apart,

falling apart the more

with each passing year

while I struggled to patch here,

hammer a nail there,

employ the tools

whose use I never understood.

 

Luckily, somewhere along the line,

I was able to set aside objects

and take up with words.

Sure, the sentences I constructed

were no more stable

than my cars, my castles,

my Lego giraffe.

But, as long as it was down on paper,

a Ford Edsel really was Sanskrit.

It got so not even I knew the difference.

 

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.

July 3, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Australia, childhood, creative, creativity, education, family, growth, humanity, images, John Grey, learning, life, memory, paper, past, poem, Poetry, shapes, skills, tools, words, writing, youth Leave a comment