Well, I needed to take a day off from the England Travelogue for two reasons. One, I was getting tired of spending 1 1/2 to 2 hours a day transferring photos from my phone to the computer, figuring out what they were, cropping them, naming them, and uploading them to the blog site. Yeah, that's right. I wasn't spending the time on the travelogue writing. I was spending 95% of my time on the very monotonous activity of moving pictures around. Two, it is time to do some creative writing.
So, I don't have any creative writing of which to speak. I have started a few things (a couple of poems and a Dewey Lynne story) but have made no headway. A good routine or consistent mood of creative writing has been eluding me in the midst of the travelogue. However, I do have a couple of cool pictures that Kellie took on our daily walks, so I will share them with you and use them to frame The Purple Thistle (Old #5). You remember this one don't you? As always, ENJOY! --ahem, something different for today.
The Purple Thistle
(Old #5)
In the rustling breath of harvest twilight,
The purple thistle spreads its frosty leaves,
Grasping wisps of eastern silver sky light
And evanescent nips of Autumn eves
Yet does not yield to peaceful sleep too soon
In the soothing aura of mother moon.
Held fast in fertile soil with heavy sigh,
Tall grasses wag their lush seeds in the wind
Strewing for migrant birds a food supply
And tickling drowsy cows upon the chin
While twisting supple torsos to a tune
Pronounced in silence by the rising moon.
Black-eyed Susan blooms bump Queen Anne’s fine lace
Smearing sinless white licentious yellow.
A green grasshopper springs in empty space;
A sleek barn swallow stabs the poor fellow
And skitters to his nest with scratch-legged boon,
His sickle shadow on the bald-faced moon.
The thistle whispers in its zealous sleep
A savior’s myth that whips through fervent dreams.
Bedecked in thorns and swathed in purple deep,
The thistle knows no suffering nor seems,
Its faith a tricky hieroglyph or rune
Translated by old lovers of the moon.
Now, both horizons blush a wounded red,
But neither orb bobs in a brightening sky.
The sleepy thistle rises from the dead
Or from a dream in which it cannot die.
The moon is gone; the sun razes the gray.
A farmer with a spray tank walks that way.
Assured it has no rot or leaf disease,
The flower flaunts its health and beams with pride.
The man believes it’s just a weed he sees
And cures the nuisance with an herbicide.
From a brass nozzle, poison mists whistle
Crusting and killing the guiltless thistle.
Slender tan grasses bend in passive bows.
Tired winds weave lazy circles to nestle
Near the bristly noses of blissful cows
In a reformed field without one thistle.
They murmur and warble as if to croon
But sing no excuse to the chary moon.
