CLOUD STREAM FOG MORNING

Child waved
from car ahead.
She knew me, then. Do I?
Who hangs here locked away behind
my eyes?

My eyes
saw pain, chilled rain,
last waves, your laughed-at plans;
yet never looked with any sense
at me.

Gray chill.
Men's eyes look down;
hands tend to bending rods.
Cloud Stream hides golden fish as old
as God.

Why these
dire sounds (soft, dead)
in dense fog near my head:
youth dreams that toll away? My screams?
They go.

----------------------------------

ANDIJK

Andijk,
tiny North town:
small houses ride big farms
across polders diked safe beneath
cool sea.

Short run,
bikes into wind:
twenty-kilometre
black flat fields dream they're still beneath
that sea.

Kestrel,
silent from here:
twenty metres due South
and ten below where she now hangs
to stoop.

Green hangs
near blue today,
and grey, soft-edged; as Spring
takes wing, kisses wet-colours land
to life.

False light,
sun through cloud-breaks:
mother sheep show black new lambs
old paths up dikes to freshest grass.
Crows wait.

CINQ CINQUAINS

THE PATH, 1

Grey shells
on walk, fresh spread
for summer's tourist surge,
await, as for a million years,
my tread.

MALL CONTENTS

They shriek
and grab and push
always for new. Plump trash-
family children in last year's
bright colours.

CAREER MOVE

Jobs came
first in our plans;
we moved from place to place
to end atop the pyramid.
Jobs went.

LIKE POPCORN

Cinquains
pop hot and fresh:
full tubs of froth and salt
in splendid form, tasty and warm
then flat.

THE PATH, 2

What have
you seen the cat
consume or ferret take?
What slaking gifts hung by the shrike,
o path?

----------------------------------

MESOZOIC PROPHECY

We stand,
proud dinosaurs
in grass. The asteroid
that will obliterate our reign
locks on.

Look on.
Attend that Roach
who waits, wrapped in black wings,
to dog our doom. You think he waits
his turn?

His turn
requires more time.
He'll bide, while mammals teem
this earth and steam our place with their
hot blood.

Odd, blood.
It'll course in veins, emend
to humans' time: they'll chime
the knell for all they've left to board
their Ark.

Fair spark
from reddest eyes
of Earth's unknown true god,
the Roach, will call in friendly fire,
as now.

Copyright © Alan Reynolds, 1996.

Alan Reynolds: email address  in Monnickendam, The Netherlands.

Visit Alan Reynold's  Web page .

Return to Cinquains .