Monday 17 April 2017

poetry 2017 / 065

Today, I challenge you to write a nocturne. In music, a nocturne is a composition meant to be played at night, usually for piano, and with a tender and melancholy sort of sound. Your nocturne should aim to translate this sensibility into poetic form! Need more inspiration? Why not listen to one of history’s most famous nocturnes, Chopin’s Op. 9 No. 2?

Summer Night 2016

Evening dome, Phthalo blue above
paling to a tint of neon at the horizon
fingers of dark cloud
deepest Indigo
breaking the cumulus into
echoes of recent rain.
The groan of a passing car
and distant buzz of a motorbike on the back lanes
stabbing a beam of light into the night.
A dog voices thought with
a further-off reply. Twilight barking.
A shower of sparks as a piece of pine
slides into the bonfire.
Two gardens away
someone calls for their cat
while overhead satellites blink
red, green, red, green
monitoring communications
listening to an English garden
for the threat of terrorism

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