Splendor

Night Jasmine – Creative Commons Credit – Dinesh Valke

(1st line from Rabindranath Tagore)

“Dream of the sudden splendour”
Stumble upon a hidden splendor.

Experience the joy of rupture
Abide by the forbidden splendor.

Shades of evening elongate, inhale
The night-jasmine’s budding splendor.

As the sun sets over the water’s edge,
Waves glimmer in golden splendor.

Stormy Pacific greys the skies,
Misting, thundercloud plum laden splendor.

The dogwoods wait for warmer winds:
They too can ablaze brazen splendor.

Dervish of Flowers

Austere hopes find pleasure in lately cherished flowers.

The blooms are articulate deluge, hues of delicacy.

Petals parted dim renderings, the viable imprint

of the blood-hot beam of light with reformed courage.

(excerpt from Elizabeth Woody’s poem Illumination)

First line from Illumination by Elizabeth Woody.

“Austere hopes find pleasure in lately cherished flowers”
Spring arrives on petals of wildly dervish flowers.

Pressed between the pages of a hard bound tome, cool drizzle
rehydrates lost memories: the imprints on burnished flowers.

White and blushing red roses, bunched together in a vase
pose a delicately pregnant question? Those coquettish flowers!

Lit by candle, naked dermis is caressed by attar water. Waiting,
to explode, desire is strewn under every petal of ravished flowers.

Attitude of an assassin, proficient in glance-slaying,
Honeyed, weaponized sonority laced with breath of hashish flowers.

Bulbs underground. Above ground: the preening crocus, tulips
and daffodils. See with flourish, and relish flowers.

Touch of time unfurls buds into articulated variance of blooms
’Mirage’ erodes this vibrancy into mottled, blemished flowers.

Notes: Elizabeth Woody, “an enrolled member of the Confederate Tribes of Warm Springs in Oregon” is Oregon’s current poet laureate (March 2016).