Florence Vilen

CURRENT ISSUE Haiku Harvest Vol. 2, No. 3 - 2001 These poems are Copyright © 2001 by Florence Vilen. Click this link: Poets & Authors for a brief biographical sketch about the poet. You can e-Mail the poet at: florence.vilen@spray.se		A Colour Sequence In Crystallines     The colour of cold, ice and snow, is floral fragrance in summer dusk.     Blue water reflecting the blue sky opens to a cloud that floats by.     Where have you been? What have you seen of marvels this one moment of green?     Petals surround the future life, packed tight in pollen, yellow with sun.     Red poppies spill their drop of young blood on history's harsh battle-fields.     Purple of power, ashes of Lent: ours to use whatever is sent.     Our goal, the soil, in patient brown will transform all life into its own.     Black in the interstellar night, beyond any world of wrong or right.               Crocus inspection                   An online chapbook by Florence Vilen     Fallen leaves, the great October sutra on impermanence     Rain in Granada, orange trees in the courtyard of the old cloister     A living wall, arch after arch of cypress trimmed to a vista     November holidays, from myrtle hedges and roses home to early snow     Winter trees put memory of green into half-hidden buds           No snow so far, but frost a white coating       on top of the cars           Loaded with snow the birches are far whiter       than ever cherry blossom           Late snow piled high; the track of the shovelled path             is all but lost           Sun on snow; in the window       a white amaryllis     Winter kept at bay             outside a London basement                         a box of tulips     Without my glasses: is this colour spring flowers or just some litter?     Crocus inspection: have the roe deer found them since yester-night?     Crocus bit off, saffron pistils showing, black droppings beside     An alder outlined by cones on older branches, new catkins swaying     Crack in the pavement,                           See the haiga!       a dandelion growing             matter-of-factish           Museum courtyard for Hellenistic marbles,       pond of yellow iris           Stone embankment, plane trees lush and leaning       down towards the Tiber     Horse chestnut, a huge chandelier for scented candles     Aspen coming out, less copper in the leaves than yesterday     White Baltic night, the tree-peony closes its flowers to the chill     After the rain one petal left on the tree-peony     Summer solstice,                           See the haiga! the green so strong in every leaf     Long Nordic dusk -- spruce and sky make the lake a birch-bark pattern     Scented season weeks around the solstice, waiting for mock-orange     Look-alike leaves, fingers tell smooth linden apart from rough elm     Growing wherever on the cliffs above water white-clustered elder     Crochet hook; a meadow of wild carrot is Queen Anne’s lace     In her summer heat the old-fashioned rose cannot help blushing     Behind and between, hide-and-seek among the leaves, oh there is the moon     Crippled leg, the duck is feeding off picnickers’ crumbs     Under tall weeds       a bright yellow carpet             of creeping-Jenny     Drizzle in August, the grey-white sky is almost dazzling           Each wet leaf sparkling in the sudden sun:       cloudbreak after rain           Pondweeds afloat, below the goldfish swim       above the clouds     August sun, the first yellow leaves on the birches     Butterfly brooch, gems to perpetuate a flitting moment     Nine tall poplars close to the terminal - I count them again     * * * * * *     After the disaster: from the piled-up bodies disharmony of cell phones     Last day of the peace, nothing in particular failed to take place     Updated geography, from old battle-fields to new bomb sites     Granny’s apple-pie: the recipe forgotten, the time to taste it, too           Stone memorial, scent of lilac lingering       over lost lives     This webpage is Copyright © 2001 by Denis M. Garrison.