Winding the Skein

My mother bought wool by the skein
great looped coils of it, too loose
to be worked with needles.
My outstretched hands, a skein looped
distance between them, anchored the hank
while she pulled, first from one hand
and then the other, ladling the wool
into balls, unravelling my yarn dressed hands
that tilted up and down, swaying to and fro,
forwards and backwards to her rhythm.
Firm but not taut
Loose but not free
If I missed a step
the skein would tangle
and I would have to let go.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2016

Feminine Curiosity

Legend is littered with stories of  women punished harshly  for their feminine curiosity; Lot's wife, Pandora, Psyche, Eve. Here is the story of one who got away with it ....by the skin of her neck

The Youngest Daughter

She fell in love with his fine houses,

a deal of silver and gold plate, and over-
-looked his blue-tinged beard and his appetite

for beautiful women.

And when he left she followed

the little back stair-case to the forbidden 
closet where she stood
in clotted blood.

The fallen key she could not clean

with any amount of soap or sand.

The silver sabre dangled
over her head

bowed in prayer. And it took a long
while for the cloud of dust
to spit out arms
to the rescue.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2016

http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/68/fairy-tales-and-other-traditional-stories/4858/blue-beard/

No ideas but in things...

"No ideas but in Things." William Carlos Williams
Part of my course is to write a  So Much Depends Upon Poem after the style of Williams!!
Here goes from an earlier short story of mine.

So Much depends Upon A Real Umbrella

So much depends

Upon

An umbrella

with a pointed

ferrule

A long

shaft and twelve

stretchers.

A real

umbrella

An older

Man

Sure

to know.

The bird

From my cupped

Hands

Its beak

No longer frozen

in fright

Must have felt it

and took flight

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2016

Cinquain

http://www.irish-art.com/db/showimage.php?id=3583

Am studying the art of the Cinquain.-a variation of the Haiku.
It has 5 lines of 22 syllables:2,4,6,8,2.

I rejigged this piece already written as Haiku into the cinquain form.
Look at the drawing which inspired it by using the link above
and hopefully the poem will make sense!

Boxman 2

Hunkered
on splayed hands, his
stripped bone-white foetal-curve
earth bound, heaven bent, knot of bone
and prayer

OR

On a  more familiar theme.

The sound 
of wings hitting
Velux attic window
panes turns out to be the mundane-
the rain.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2016

First Love

It's fun to think of those TV series you used to watch decades ago- the intensity of the feelings!!!
 I was in love with several  of the Old-Time cowboys and wrote a letter to Maverick!!
So the recent sighting of a bow-legged man brought some of it back to me....
Deeply indebted to the Theme Song.

First Love

The swaggering sight of a bow- legged man,
his knees shouldering nonchalance,
embodies for me more loss than gain.

1960 and Bronco Layne tearin’  across
the Texas Plain. Hollywood studio sunset 
behind him, his bowed legs arching the earth.

And for one charged moment I become the gal

who kissed him once, then kissed him twice.

Then spent her days dreamin’ of shoes and rice.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2016

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronco_(TV_series)

http://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/broncolyrics.html

School Lessons

There is always some sadness in learning.

When we were nine we embarked on a tour
of the Thirty –Two Counties, Sister Joseph's tipped cane

pointing the way. At Belfast Shipyard inauspicious

clouds gathered over the half-built Titanic:

A cross-channel steamer at a high rate of speed

ranging her on her moorings, parting her long fore and aft

springs, causing the wire hawser to fall suddenly on one

of the scows on which several men were working. If only

they’d heeded CP from Harland and Woolf Ltd- they’d have known

she was jinxed. She was ship 401, and by the time the cane had drilled-

home the fate of all of her predecessors our ship was running

out of steam. We took a north-westerly route, navigating

the coastline as far as the Giant’s Causeway, but it was there

that our engine failed. No crank of cylinder across the Border

and into the Free State. We had to settle for the Six Counties.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2016

https://nmni.com/titanic/Design-Build/Harland---Wolff/Belfasts-Titanic-Shipyard.aspx

Makeover Poems

Am following a course in poetry online with http://creativewriting.ie/ and this is one of the exercises. 

Apart from the "how to" aspect...  the challenge is to rejig a poem you have already written 

so you may have read an earlier incarnation of this one in a previous post.

How to gut a fish or edit a poem

First you have to lay the subject flat

and cut off head and tail.

No mercy for extraneous indigestible

matter. Make puncture wound at anus, cutting

through paired pelvic fins, slicing

the thin abdominal wall, incising

the ventral surface along the horizontal

until you reach jaw.

Let spill the guts and blood and slime -

A delicate flick of knife at dorsal fin

turn the spine of your knife against

the grain of the scales, and flay

until you shed silver.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2016