Bella Donna

At dverse Bjorn is hosting and has challenged us to write a poem about poisonous flowers!

She loves you
she loves you not
she loves
picking petals, crushing leaves
feeding you berries until
your blood’s a deadly
shade of night.
Until you think this love
is not quite right because

your throat is dry
speech is slurred
heart is racing
vision blurred

And yet you still drink in
her every word.

She’s your passion flower
and her dolls eyes
so big and dark
they draw you in
until you cannot move
cannot breath, completely
frozen by her beauty.

She loves you
she loves you not.

Poisonous plants:
Actaea pachypoda: known as doll’s eyes or white baneberry.
Atropa belladonna: known as deadly nightshade or devil’s cherry
Passilfora caerulea: known as passion flower

Note: bella donna is derived from Italian and means beautiful woman because night shade drops were used by them to dilate the pupils of their eyes to make them appear seductive.

Light In Shadows

dverse tonight and it’s Quadrille time when De wants our 44-word poem to include the word ‘bounce’.

We sit and watch the river
break its back over rocks,
catch our breath as light
bounces through fractured
water. Undercurrent shadows
are sucked away downstream.
In those we see times when noise
was closed out and we rested
in the silence of being.

dVerse anthology

Delighted to have two poems in here which feature quality work from poets in Europe, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Africa.