Frieda looking particularly fetching on a frosty morning

Frieda with the Naturally Curly Horns

"Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night..."

Bright Star
by John Keats

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

behind the cloud

Cloud
by Kay Ryan

A blue stain
creeps across
the deep pile
of the evergreens.
From inside the
forest it seems
like an interior
matter, something
wholly to do
with trees, a color
passed from one
to another, a
requirement
to which they
submit unflinchingly
like soldiers or
brave people
getting older.
Then the sun
comes back and
it’s totally over.

Uncanny Aim

Uncanny Aim

by HMMooreNiver

Somehow the narrow arrow’s point
aims right
and hits the hidden hollow,
that black splatter
deep in the pink
of your heart.

And why wouldn’t it
head straight
for the one scar
you struggled so hard
to heal
all these years?

The single fissure
you have tried
to forget.

for One Shot Wednesday

Winter Woollies

Lucy von Fleece (foreground) & Frieda with the Naturally Curly Horns (background)

Hephzibah