(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



PWB Peeps Open Thread: Poetry of Mathers [1]

['Bill In Portland Maine', 'Dan K', 'Greg Dworkin']

Date: 2026-06-26  

Uploaded to DailyKos by officebss

Six Love Songs

Edward Powys Mathers (1892-1939)

I.

We are both silver sea-trout

And have risen to delicate flies on streams

And got away.

Atlantic Salmon, Salmo salar, Taken thru glas, in Atlanterhavsparken, Ålesund, Norway WIKI/CC/Hans-Petter Fjeld

The young ferns balance on the wet earth

Like green smoke above a coal.

Ferns on rock CaptainDunsel

Let us watch the sun throw gold plates

Down to us through lake water

Where none fish.

Walking the Sparkle Path (2022) by British artist, Lara Cobden (born in 1971). Oil and ink on gessoed panel

II.

The Recreation Gardens are smothered over

With a bottle-coloured wood of wet trees

And the gates were shut at ten.

Uploaded to DailyKos by enhydra lutris

With your straight thin pipe and your face and arms

Stamped black as against mauve paper

You sit piping in our open window.

Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/sandeephanda-5704921/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=2523213">Sandeep Handa</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=2523213">Pixabay</a>

It may be only a very large daintily-moving dog

Shut in the Gardens, and that I did not hear

The few notes like a sleepy quail.

Gambels Quail MojaveMonkey

III.

I have bought a pound of jade wool

Of the color of the round bases of toy trees

And a quarter of mole wool

Coloured like the smoke of a steamer.

boredpanda

In two or three weeks

You, whose spirit is as quick as silver dust

Stirred into the sea,

Shall have the appearance of a tinted

Jacinth laughing in the rain.

Pinterest

IV.

There is frost

As if a cutter of images of you

Had dropped powder of geranium marble

On the coarse dark grass.

Frosted grass owktree

I have left you asleep

And feel that if the candle

Set down inside the open door

To throw continuous William Allen Richardson roses

Into the cold lavender morning

Does not blow out before I get back

You will still be there.

Outdoor candle about to burn out. Walt Stoneburner via flickr (CC BY 2.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

V.

Because of the glass shade

Our marble table was ever the cross-bar

Of a white A

And the rest angles of broken lemon light

With a drowned sprig of mountain-ash berries,

Sitka Mountain Ash (Sorbus sitchensis) Milly Watt

A peat-coloured crystal carrying

Cherries and crushed mint against your lips.

Now the nights are a cool

Pattern of thin black wood bed-bars

Tortoiseshell cat on narrow headboard. twingrace's daughter

With spread of orange and another orange,

Firm black letters lightly carrying eyes

Among white margins,

And brown tea.

Uploaded to DailyKos by AuntieB

VI.

The night is so full of movement

That the stars seem like corn being threshed

Against a blue barn.

The Milky Way over Mt. Hood with stars reflected in Lost Lake, Mt. Hood National Forest, Cascade Mountains, Oregon Diana Robinson via flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

The wind is a black river

And just for a moment

The moon a small green fish

Swimming in your hair.

Yajuro Takashima – Mangetsu, 1963.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on June 21, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/6/26/800060965/community/pwb-peeps-open-thread-poetry-of-mathers/

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/