Jubal's poems

[Jubal]

Once again I've gone multiple months of a new year without writing any poetry, but here's a start for 2026 at long last


Under the City

This place is the sound when the small birds sing
That sound as though they'd heard a violin
And ne'er forgot the note -
The tune some past composer wrote,
That echoes still in chimes of broken lake-ice by the shore
And in the dripping of snow-melt from high trees,
And in the cold sun's embrace.

This place is the low and rolling call that sighs,
That murmurs under waves and gull-shrieked cries
Which yet are shrieked again,
So neither sound subsides in the refrain
Like thoughts and ponderances etched into the salt and tide,
All crashed upon the rocks and spurs which the mariners and seabirds know,
The mothers of those scatterings of wood and gold and sail far below

This is a city of magpies,
Pale as its art and ice-songs, night-dark as formless depths and burned-up homes
But for all their sorrows and joys, their secrets left untold,
One might think if perhaps they, too, see the sunset on dappled ice
And wonder what is hidden in the depths beneath.

This place has dreams that I have not yet learned to dream
Squirreled deep in moss and lichen
Trickled true in frozen stream,
Amid the birch and dogwood nets,
And spun in tales of never-ending snow
That - being tales - will never melt or end,
Those magpies' shining prizes, borne aloft in glory and folly
So that, their victory won, they let the dreams roll ever on,
Where under the moss and lichen
Where under the murmuring eider and the squalling gull
Where under the sound of a little bird that might have heard a violin before time and tide began -
This place slumbers ever still.