We chose the house simply,
On a slight rise surrounded by nature,
Tight against winter chill.
Inside Chopin, good wine, warmth,
The voice of the fireplace a whisper,
It has a pulsating heat, a heart.
We have climbed life’s mountain, together,
Hand in hand, helping, sometimes waiting.
The scent of us is mingled in the night,
A winter storm beats on the door,
We will not let it in, it is not welcome.
Winter is the change, the long sleep,
The blanket of snow preserving the spring,
We will look out our windows in April,
There will be flowers dancing with color.
Like memories preserved they live in belief.
We have always believed in another spring,
Nature’s reward for surviving winter.
Beside me on the couch I see you,
Your smile sweeps the years of cob webs away,
A wine glass empty, yours left untouched.
Though the hours only receive my breath,
I know you are there, hand in hand.
When sleep finds me, I will dream of you,
Holding you through the night once again.

Copyright: 2009, Donald Harbour

The lights mirrored in the eyes of a child,
Reflections of crayon color brilliance,
Hearts beat faster as anticipation becomes real.
With a harvest moon glow the shadows soften,
Straddling canvas tents and Kewpie doll shacks,
The noise is deafening, loud and mesmerizing,
A cotton candy air mixed with manure and diesel
Invading lungs, firing the hunger to see it all,
It is a magical potion, a delirious digesting of night,
Where there was peace and oneness, there is now
Calamity, a fractured desire that will end, tomorrow
As this county fair carnival folds into itself,
Packs its rag-tag bags in dilapidated trailers,
Disappearing with it excitement, thrilling wonderment,
Passing down the road in a flurry of exhaust fumes,
Leaving the children memories, to contemplate next year.

Copyright: 2009, Donald Harbour

The wind rustles the branches,
bones of trees with dying leaves,
the rattle is a cacophony of color,
gold, amber, orange, purple and red,
dancing, gleefully screaming a farewell,
holding as long as possible to the bough.

The music of fall sighs and whispers
across the meadow of brown grasses.
There is peace in the melody,
gently grating away the summer dust,
turning back the covers to an autumn bed.

A winter wisp of mare tails in the sky,
with frosty lips, North announces its coming.
Each breath a chilling knife,
carving away the husk of the past,
sculpting the delivery of a new year.

It is enchanting, a marvelous display,
a gift of reassurance that life
will continue renewed, refreshed,
nurtured by the promise of time and,
the earths fragile balance with nature.

Copyright: 2009, Donald Harbour

This piece is written in the form of an Elizabethan (Shakespearean) Sonnet. It is the simplest and most flexible pattern of all sonnets, consisting of 3 quatrains of alternating rhyme and a couplet. The sonnet  was inspired by  Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra.

****************************************************************

Oh thou bitterest fruit
Thee that claim mine emptied heart.
By my troth upon Pans lute,
Pray thee, hast thou a chart,
I would that thou didst take thy path,
‘Ods me, ’twere but returned,
Thief thee be for that thou hath,
A fortnight morrow my soul be burned,
Life begone, I crave your pardon,
Fie me, little wench ye pretty toed,
An it please thee I recline in thy garden,
Where I thank thee for pleasure owed,
This heart returned by a strumpet faire,
Thy kiss to seal hearts dalliance there.

Copyright: 2009, Donald Harbour

We never give thought to grass.
Yet there it is, everywhere.
A green cushion, a chlorophyll carpet.
A protective cover between Earth,
And the things that would harm her.
Grass, we sow it, grow it, mow it,
We pluck it from the dirt,
Scrape it, dig it, poison it, burn it,
Yet there it is, everywhere.
It struggles to exist.
It is eaten and beaten,
Cursed and railed against.
We lay with our backs pressed to it,
Grass gently pushes us,
So that we can fall into the sky.
When it is allowed to grow very tall,
We hide in it to escape.
Some have even listened to it grow,
Though I have never heard it.
Yet there it is, everywhere.
Grass gives life,
Sustains creatures large and small.
It does not judge or enslave.
We play our games on it.
Nations have spilled their blood,
Soaking its roots,
Turning it from Creation’s green,
To the red of pain and death,
Then we are buried beneath it.
It forgives us, all ways there waiting.
Covered in the cool of the morning dew.
It is trod upon, pressed down.
One moment the jackboot crushes it,
The next moment it is back,
Leaving not a trace of passage.
Yet there it is, everywhere.
From the heartland of a country,
Making verdant emerald hills,
Grass has defined the landscape of cultures.
As we do with people, grass is walked upon,
Bruised by the passage of our soles,
Burdened with the contamination of our living.
Yet there it is, everywhere.
Maybe if each of us,
The mighty and lowly,
If we were reincarnated
As a blade of grass,
And maybe if we could but remember
That experience, just maybe,
We would be allowed to comeback,
A better human.

Copyright: 2009, Donald Harbour

Your secret irresistible voice whispers in my ear.
When you are close enough for my mind to feel the heat
of your Sen-Sen scented breath the desire in me
rattles the bars of my mental confinement,
screaming like a simian in a circus cage.

Desire is replaced with unfathomable passion, longing,
the corpse past, the moment a bog of unformed sculptors clay.
Your hands will mold it, thumbs, fingers gouging, stroking
the flesh until it is what you want it to be.
There will be resistance, a denying of the inevitable.

That cloying thrill when your body barely touches mine,
the anticipation an ecstasy, the taking a sensual summit,
sucking at my soul, devouring it until your creation is finished.
Fired by passion, this ceramic investment of chelations awaits the
cast when again your secret irresistible voice whispers in my ear.

Copyright: 2009, Donald Harbour

Life has masked the years
that have tumbled through
my eyes, masked by the
event of being, of loving,
of feeling pain, of laughter,
masked by the stare of thousands
of minutes peering into the future,
remembering the past, waiting
for the next shade of evening,
a view of distant approaching
headlights down this dusty lane
that I have walked as I trod toward
that inevitable point of reason,
knowing when the mask is removed,
the eternal night without a dawn begins.

Copyright: 2009, Donald Harbour

I once saw a murder of crows hanging upside down on a telephone line.
Having a knowledge of how to speak crow I asked:
”Hey dudes, why are you hanging upside down?”
They cackled, as crows do, and said:
” To get a human perspective of the world.”
Crows are so damn smart!

Copyright: 2009, Donald Harbour

Pick me, I cling free,
Clasp me in your hand,
A ripe peach sweet fleshed,
Taste my blushed skin,
Bite into me as juices flow,
Lick the tang of my nectar,
Rejoice, renew, close your eyes,
Vision the nourishment you hold,
At my core is a bitter seed,
Do not cast it aside, plant it,
For tomorrow it will grow,
Becoming fruit laden branches.

Copyright: 2009, Donald Harbour

My deepest apologies to William Shakespeare, and to all those (I am one) who love the work of that genius. This was for Read Write Poem #95 compose a mash poem by combining two of your works or yours and another writer. Hence, that which contains the soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the poem “Faded from the vision” I wrote in July, 2008. For you poor Yorick. My gorge rises at it, thus the green for Bill’s words.

*******************************************************************

I am tired of feeling the weight of years
To be, or not to be–that is the question:
Like the muck sucking at my life’s boots
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
Each step an effort of defiance.
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Defiance is the oxygen to my brain.
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
To what purpose I have asked myself,
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep–
Does one choose that which they are to be
No more–and by a sleep to say we end
Or is choice only the pasturage of the wealthy
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
Unclogged with the principles of existence
That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation
The chains of expectation drag one into the mire
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep–
Shackled by the commitments for honor, for love,
To sleep–perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub,
Keyed and captured in the clanging of our words
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
Spoken only for lack of reasonable thought.
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
A dream scape flashes the past faster and faster
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
The projector dies trying to keep up
That makes calamity of so long life.
But the pictures have not faded from the vision.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Time does that when the bulb element ceases.