Category: Echo, Dance and Music poetry

Birth Echoes Through Time – 15 December (2020 Re-post)

Birth echoes through all our time
Time shard echoes in our minds
Minds echo with contact cruel or kind
Cruel or kind actions, echo through humankind
Humankind echoes, with what was done before our time
Time to shed the old, to let new life echo all around

©RedCat

Re-post comment:

I’m running late for everything it feels like. But mostly it’s about the writing I have left to do. And the fact that I haven’t prepared the advent calendar as I had thought to do. So here a day late you’ll get the post I have thought to re-post to free my time up and celebrate my oldest turning ten.

Enjoy!

At first I thought I’d do a re-post today, of my first Echo Poem, to give me free birthday time. But my mind keep going round and round in echoes, so I had to write a new one.

Each year in the day leading up to my children’s birthday I have flashbacks of birth both in mind and body. Not something I mention often as it sound so trippy, but both my own mother and others have described similar feelings. And if your open to it, giving birth is one of the most profound birth-death-rebirth experiences, aka trips, a woman can have.

Image credits:

First image: Photo by ©Jonas Norén
Second image: Image Source on Wikimedia Commons
Third image: Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash
Forth image: Photo by NASA on Unsplash


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Reading: Daughter Of The Moon – A Mirrored Refrain Poem

Knowing what only hearts and souls know
Blessed by nature in the womb
I am a daughter of the moon
From my loom I call buds to bloom

Seeing what the eye’s can’t see
Knowing the meaning of the ancient runes
From my loom I call buds to bloom
I am a daughter of the moon

Feeling what the forest folk feel
Hearing wisdom from the tombs
I am a daughter of the moon
From my loom I call buds to bloom

Hearing what the trees hear
Dancing to the season’s tunes
From my loom I call buds to bloom
I am a daughter of the moon

©RedCat

Written for Poetry Form: Mirrored Refrain at dVerse. Yesterday I sat stargazing while mulling over the refrain lines. Then I wrote in a furious tempo before going to sleep. I realised it felt like this poem really should be read aloud. So I held off posting it until I had the time to make a recording. Click on the Soundcloud link above to hear it.

I love writing repeating forms like the Pantoum, Triolet and Echo poems. And almost always read my poems out loud when editing to hear the sound and rhythm, to feel out the places where the melody snags on a word or phrase. That’s why this one has extra repeating sounds and an internal rhyme in one refrain line. Because I liked the sounds it made.

The Mirrored Refrain is a rhyming verse form constructed by Stephanie Repnyek.

The poem is formed by three or more quatrains where two lines within the quatrain are the “mirrored refrain” or alternating refrain.

The rhyme scheme is as follows: xaBA, xbAB, xaBA, xbAB, etc..

x represents the only lines that do not rhyme within the poem. A and B represent the refrain.

From Shadow Poetry

Also shared with Promote Yourself Monday at Go Dog Go Café

Image credits:

Purple moon image: Photo by Silas Peters on Unsplash

Moon over water image: Photo by Javardh on Unsplash

Forest image: Photo by Michael Krahn on Unsplash

Loom image: Photo by Nickolas Nikolic on Unsplash

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Goodbye, I don’t want to see you go! – Lyric

I’ve been in love with you for a long time
And in my mind I know such love, are hard to find
I wish I had my love more clearly shown
Goodbye, I don’t want to see you go!

I can feel it in my heart
How you want to be apart
You’re all I ever wanted, yet I wrecked and crushed your heart
Cause I know I let you down
And I know I betrayed your trust
When I should have shown you how much, I love you

I’ll miss the naughty sparkle in your eyes
It makes me cry hot tears to know I’ll never see your secret smile
I wish I could go back and let you know
Goodbye, I don’t want to see you go!

Cause I know I did you wrong
I can’t seem to make it right
You’ll leave me very lonely
I’ll never love someone like you
Tell me how to win you back
For I haven’t got a clue
But let me start by saying, I love you

Goodbye, I don’t want to see you go!
Cause I know I did you wrong
I can’t seem to make it right
You’ll leave me very lonely
I’ll never love someone like you
Tell me how to win you back
For I haven’t got a clue
But let me start by saying, I love you

©RedCat

Written for Hello, It’s Me You’re Looking For – Challenge #187 at Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie. Where we’re asked to 

“focus on this song and use it for a short story, a piece of flash fiction, or a poem that you can share”

The song is Lionel Richie’s Hello, It’s Me You’re Looking For from 1983. Lionel Richie was a favorite of my mother so I listened quite a lot to him as a child, and liked both the longing for love songs and the happy “dancing on the ceiling” type songs. 

Listening to it as I took a walk this afternoon I got the idea to try to keep the same kind of longing, but flipping the script from an imagined love to one that is over. The inspiration for that comes from someone near who has made a mess out of his marriage and doesn’t know how to take even the first steps to save it.

After a few more repeats I got it into my head to try to keep to the melody and write an alternate lyric. It helps to know the song by heart, meaning I’m able to keep the melody in my mind and write line for line new ones. After very much debate I left the last two lines of the chorus as in the original, because frankly I couldn’t write anything better. 

I’ve included a link to an instrumental version for those that like to try and sing the lyrics!

Photo by Geran de Klerk on Unsplash.
Title – Lost in the woods.
Location – Nynäshamn, Sweden

2

Lord Of Hope, Lady Of Love – A Chant

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

Lord of hope
Help us cope
Love our light and darkness both

Lady of love
As stars above
Let us spread our love

From south to north
Bring spirits forth
Bless the fire in our hearths

From east to west
Bring us rest
Protect us in our life quest

Bring sun and rain
Heal our pain
Wash away fear’s chains

Let wild winds blow
Let the lonely know
There’s always love within your glow

Lord of hope
Help us cope
Love our light and darkness both

Lady of love
As stars above
Let us spread our love

©RedCat
Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash

Written for Meet the bar with Chant poetry at dVerse. Those of you who read me before know I love rhythm and repetition. And often write Pantoums and Triolets for example. 

I played around with several triplets before deciding on putting some of them together. I wanted this to be more rhythmically complex than previous chants I’ve written.
“Come Poets Hope” for example has the same rhythm throughout.

I imagine this being chanted by a whole coven. Either as a duet or trio. Perhaps even as a canon. Each stanza in itself works as a chant.

Photo by Thomas Despeyroux on Unsplash
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Sounds Of Spring

Evening sky over Stockholm
©RedCat

The sounds of spring
makes me dance and sing
such a lovely thing
the sweet song of spring

The air turns warm
after winter storms
you our love affirm
with your smile so warm

The fields are green
the bright flowers gleam
will you be my queen
in the summer green

Love fills my heart
as the swallows dart
as cold winds depart
Your love fills my heart

The moon shines bright
in the pale blue night
in your eyes so bright
let us kiss tonight

©RedCat

Written for Meet the bar waltzing at dVerse. Have been humming waltz rhythms since yesterday. This is written to be sung to the count of three even if the first lines in each stanza have 4 syllables and the rest 5 syllables. It’s all a matter of how a word is sung.

Photo by Nihal Demirci on Unsplash
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Three Times Three Times Three – April Ekphrastic Challenge

Jane Cornwell

She was hung upon the tree
Three times three times three
So her mother didn’t have to her unwanted child see
So the other children could hurl spear insults with glee
So men could do as they pleased while she couldn’t flee

She was hung upon the tree
Three times three times three
For the crime of not stifling her curiosity
For the crime of speaking out against bigotry
For the crime of being different as all could see

She was hung upon the tree
Three times three times three
For the sin of searching creativity
For the sin of reading witchery
For the sin of speaking knowledgeably

When the God of the Hanged saw a woman tested on the tree
Three times three times three
Fjolnir sang one of the magic song to set her free
The One Eyed taught her how to truly see
Wayfinder showed all the ways on land and at sea
Forni taught her the world’s history
Ygg showed her the secrets of the tree
Glapsvid taught her spells to once more happy and healthy
Odin showed her the runes to unravel every mystery
The All Father gave her mead to awaken her poetry

©RedCat

This painting gives me shivers. Has every time I look at it. So today’s choice was a foregone conclusion. 

And for some reason it led me to thinking about the very debated part of the Edda poem Hávamál (line 138-145), where Odin sacrificed himself to himself, wounded by a spear, hanging on the world tree Yggdrasil for nine nights to be able to gain greater mystic knowledge from the magic runes.

So I read about Odin in my Poetic Edda copy, and read through what I could find online including a scholastic article from 2014. (You can find it here, but it’s in Swedish.)

Then, as I tend to do I made the story my own!

The last stanza contains nine different names for Odin.

To see all art and read all poems for today go to The Wombwell Rainbow.

This is also the poem I plan to read at tonight’s dVerse Open Link Live. The price of admission is a poem written by you. But if you rather not read and just listen that’s fine too.

See you there!

Photo by veeterzy on Unsplash
Jane Cornwell


likes drawing and painting children, animals, landscapes and food. She specialises in watercolour, mixed media, coloured pencil, lino cut and print, textile design. Jane can help you out with adobe indesign for your layout needs, photoshop and adobe illustrator. She graduated with a ba(hons) design from Glasgow School of art, age 20.

She has exhibited with the rsw at the national gallery of Scotland, SSA, Knock Castle Gallery, Glasgow Group, Paisley Art Institute, MacMillan Exhibition at Bonhams, Edinburgh, The House For An Art Lover, Pittenweem Arts Festival, Compass Gallery, The Revive Show, East Linton Art Exhibition and Strathkelvin Annual Art Exhibition.

Her website is: https://www.janecornwell.co.uk/

April Ekphrastic Challenge – GloPoWriMo 2021

10

It’s Springtime Again – A Folk Song (with Audio), April Ekphrastic Challenge

Green Man – John Law

Seasons they come, and seasons they go
There’s no need to shed tears for summer
She’ll come come back again, when the flower moon glow
And we’ll dance to magic midsummer

It’s springtime again
It’s springtime again
The green man has brought it back to us
Trees budding again
Grass growing again
Time to plant seeds and be joyous

Seasons they go, and come back again
Though we might forget during winter
But soon there once more be sun in the glen
And we’ll fill the forest with laughter

It’s springtime again
It’s springtime again
The green man has brought it back to us
Trees budding again
Grass growing again
Time to plant seeds and be joyous

©RedCat
It’s Spring Time Again sung acapella by RedCat

For some reason after reading up on the Green Man I started to think about folk songs and ballads. And one in particular started playing in my head – In folk song tone (I Folkviseton) by Nils Ferlin, a poet who I sang long before I read. It’s a well known love song.

So, I ended up writing a poem that is set to the same tune as Ferlin’s poem. And then making an acapella recording of it. :-)

I’ve had similar ideas befor, but this is the first time I actually managed to pull it together. Which makes me very happy and proud indeed. Maybe someday I will actually reach that elusive song writer place.
To see all art and read all poetry for today go to The Wombwell Rainbow.

Also shared with Open Link Night at dVerse.

Photo by Dmytro Tolokonov on Unsplash
John Law

“Am 68. Live in Mexborough. Retired teacher. Artist; musician; poet. Recently included in ‘Viral Verses’ poetry volume. Married. 2 kids; 3 grandkids.”

April Ekphrastic Challenge – GloPoWriMo 2021

31

Witch Voices (2020 Re-post)

Night Poured Over the Desert
Sheila Sund, Salem, United States [CC BY 2.0)]

We live in solitude, we three
Three for one and one for three
You will think us an apparition, you’ll see

Lives run by magic and moon
Moon and magic sees us identical to humdrum brain loon
Only a loon they say
Sees witches on a moonless day

Just a platitude, that we can time fold
We are not centuries old
Just an old tale
Again, and again re-told

Our roots run deep
Deep down where shared memory sleep
We feel the gravity of your leap
Need to renew, to wonder keep

Like the canary in the mine
Mine and your soul is on the line
Soul locked in a dark cage, let it fly free – soar
On inspiration dine
Lore by unique poet voices shine

We are the circle of mother, maiden, crone
In the circle we the Goddess intone
She steers our lives with wisdom felt deep in the bone

© REDCAT

Re-post comment:

Middle of the week means Wandering the Archives Wednesday. Tonight an echo poem that still makes me smile. And wonder when the three witches might turn up the next time. The original post was published 3 January 2020.

Hope you enjoy it to!

Written for both PLAY IT AGAIN! with REAL TOADS and A Skylover Word List ~ Apparition.
My second choice for PLAY IT AGAIN! became: Kerry Says ~ Let’s Find Our Poetic Voice (from July 2015). And just because my muse took me in that direction it also became another attempt at echo poetry.

The three witches appeared through my pen when I started writing poetry. They are free, headstrong characters that sometimes have their way with me. You can also find them in December Moon. Witches brew and Yesteryear Cheer.

I owe thanks for my inspiration to Kerry, without her prompts I wouldn’t have managed this, to Björn who showed how it should be done. And to Terry Pratchett for writing hilarious and thought provoking witches.

Daniel Gardner [Public domain]
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