Deep Tweed monostich

So  home !      beneath

the orange-trees,

through the deep darkness

that smelled like tweed …

[Inspired by:  Evelyn Waugh, “A Pleasure Cruise in 1929”;

slightly redacted for assonance.]

Disjecta membra

Scraps  from a single paragraph  of The Green Hat (1924):

Her eyes were stronger than mine,

even as wind  is stronger than air.

… silk the colour of daylight …

I took hold of the sword in my mind  with both hands,

but was not strong enough to lift it.

Labor Day indeed

The human year needs public holidays, each with its own import, to give structure to the cycle of experience, the way a body needs a skeleton, which would else be a flabby blob.  The traditional Church is rich in these;  we in the secular world need cherish what few we’ve got.

For long, the Labor Day weekend served as a sort of Mardi Gras, marking the end of the lotus months of summer, a last family fling before knuckling down to to the autumnal duties of work and school.   That role has been undermined by lobbies that, in many places, have contrived to start up the school year prematurely.   (In our area, thus jumping the gun  proved especially pointless, as we've had a streak of sultry weather, and some classes had to be cancelled on that account.) Kudos to the governor of Maryland for putting a stop to that.

For the roster of our posts concerning public holidays, click here.

For labor matters, here.

Ashes to Ashes monostich

The blue smoke floated up  and was  lost  along  the wind.

Requiescat in pace

[From:  the funeral scene in Aldous Huxley, Those Barren Leaves (1925), p. 337]

Tone Poem

the ghosts were playing oboes,

not for the sensual ear,

in the ruined sepulchres.

[Source: Aldous Huxley, Those Barren Leaves (1925), p. 299.

Behold the open notes of ghosts and oboes!]

Ur-Erde monostich

   The soil of the hills  was red,

   like that from which God made Adam.

[Source: Aldous Huxley, Those Barren Leaves (1925), p. 276.

Read while traveling in Australia’s “Red Centre”.]

Sunrise monostich

   the poplar trees   threw shadows

   longer than themselves

[Source: Aldous Huxley, Those Barren Leaves (1925), p. 249.
A familiar phenomenon, curiously expressed.
Cf. the idiom "punching above their weight".]

And compare:

From the crest of the Ciminian mountains

they first saw the sun.

[id., p. 331]

Minimalist Limerick

Once a lady

pretty shady

   broke wedlock,

   robbed the poor-box

and ran off with Father O’Grady.