TRIOLET ON THE CRESCENT MOON

Howl Turkish moon, slither of light,
Illuminate my destiny,
Stamp void with influential might.

Howl Turkish moon, slither of light,
Howl dark orb, scimitar of night,
Squinting fluence of third degree.

Howl Turkish moon, slither of light,
Illuminate my destiny.

Jane Sharp
2010

A Triolet is a 13th century poetical form.

CLOSE ENCOUTER WITH A TOAD

Shocked at the sight
Of an uninvited drain-liver
Inside,

I pulled the face of a Gargoyle
And made a loud "Ugh' noise.

He plopped over my hand
In the shadows
A good six inches.

We played that game of 'statues'
Like at school - turn away
Move.

He proved a match 'till I caught him
Mid hop in my
Mop-bucket,

Like a rubber toy I once had,
He dived upwards all slime,
Scaring me with the sudden
Rigidity of his blob-body.

I took him to the door
And put him out like Tom
For the night.

A slimy toad in the drizzle of a
Cold midnight
Jumping.

I knew he would never be
A fairytale Frog:
A handsome prince.

Jane Sharp

HAIKU ON LIFE, ON WISDOM, ON A CANDLE, ON DEATH

I am in being
Tomorrow is becoming
Now is in passing

The Papa smiles and
The wisdom of Sofia
Is in his aura

In a tiny church
I lit a candle and prayed
For those who suffer

It flickered beside
Other diminishig flames
And danced in the dark

And spent wick littered
The eternal sand-filled font
Glittering gold-leaf

The eclipse is a
Shadow at the edge of dark
Where light is dissolved

Jane Sharp
2004

OLIVE PICKING

Working in the olive grove,
Dimitri thinks only of the yield from his old roots,
This knot-knarled tree is one of his favourites,
Years of pruning has coaxed its spreading shape
Into a willow-wide bouquet of boughs,
Laden with bullet-blooms that beg release.

Now, the master stands back and admires
All that nature (with his help) has created,
And before the purging begins,
Silence.

Then, with every thwack of his katsouna,
He urges the fat, cobalt fruit to shower onto
Carefully laid collecting nets.

This hessian pack, unloading onto stone
From the wooden back of unshod Neddy,
Is filled from that great, cracked tree (a good year),
And Dimitri, we see, is pleased
As the press begins to wind, and the screw to crush
The olives.

So the scene with stubborn Herk,
In slow perambulation making work the grind,
Till mushy purple-tinted juice infuses fabric
With virgin-sweet scent,
Ali-Baba jars are brimming full of oil,
And tired Dimitri is content.

Jane Sharp
2004

THINK OF ME

When the lid of my box, outside the door,
Stands sentinel to my journeying soul,
And sunlight throws a prismic-cross across
The name plate of my chest, think then of the
Day we scrambled up the knoll through thicket
Only fit for a girded Prince to brave,
In attempt to raise his Sleeping Beauty.
And remember the apex of rock which
Gave us solitude;it was a place to
Sense parameters wider than the world.
We were drip-fed by threads of lurex-light,
Until so large had we become, and yet
So small, so much a part of the strata
That all below seemed, as from a magic
Carpet, to flow upstream, and we remained
Unseen observers perched on a warm rock.
Go there now, or top some other apogee,
And say goodbye, for I am already
Out of reach on Charon's ferry, and can
See your words unfurl like almond blossom
In the ether: soft whispered curls of sound
That becomes the hush-dance of the ocean.
And when you light a candle think of me,
Put a kiss on your fingertips and blow
It to the winds of Africa, for I
Am in each speck of the Sahara, my
Life but a memory that is flashing
Across the universe, a shooting star,
Death a mirror fractured by blinding light.

Jane Sharp
2010