Poetry Thursday - image inspiration
For Poetry Thursday this week, the completely and totally optional idea called for image inspiration.
For this topic, we were to be inspired by an image of something and, if possible, post a picture of our inspiration.
I decided to post a poem I wrote almost a year ago. My poem, Witness, was inspired from the memory of watching a passing storm, as I stood alone on a secluded cliff top; gazing out to sea. The storm was violent, but contained, and so I was able to watch the passing activity, without having a single drop of rain fall upon me. It was quite a spiritual experience...so near, was I to the storm, that I could almost touch it.
This poem was inspired by my memory of that passing squall. I witnessed it over 10 years ago, but the imagery was so powerful, that it stayed with me. So I apologise for not having a picture of the actual inspiration.
I wrote this poem inspired firstly by the literal, but the poem itself is actually a metaphor for something that was going on around me at the time; something that was nothing much to do with me, nevertheless, I stood as a witness to it, and from my vantage point, I felt I could see its inevitable path - beginning, through to end.
Witness
Through smattered salt sprayed window panes,
A curtain cautiously flutters.
A distant murmur entwines a tender breeze;
Stormy undertones blend nautical mutter.
Threatening cumulus bloom with haste.
Ferocity builds with tempest’s intent.
A distant mist drenches heavy horizons,
Expressing God and Angels lament.
From a plateau of bordering coastal crust;
having endured eons of nature’s lashings,
Bearing witness to this distant mistral,
Though absent from its transmuting passions.
Marine bound rain replenishing
The weary soul of the salty sea.
Gently sweeping as do wings of a wasp,
Or sprouting forth like bloody mutiny.
I dwell the crown of this shy plateau,
Where below, earth and water collide.
I observe the tempest billowing westward,
An untamed odyssey, it loathes to subside.
© Strauss
22/4/06
