FERNSEED FOR FAIRYSIGHT
Poems
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FERNSEED FOR FAIRYSIGHT by Sally Odgers
The poems in this collection include ballads and acrostics, and quite a few songs with refrains. What they don't include is free verse or any of the strict syllabic forms. The style used might be called retro-Victorian metrical verse, but don't let that trouble you. These pieces were conceived from a fascination with the worlds of fantasy and a joy in the music of the English language. Despite, or perhaps because of, their subject matter, they are not intended for younger readers.
Sally Odgers has been writing verse for forty years. Several of her poems have been published in collections and anthologies from mainstream publishers in Australia and the UK, and she has produced a handful of rhyming picture books as well as a how-to book called Writing Metrical Verse. Sally is a full time writer.
I hope you have enjoyed your journey through my patterns of magic and rhyme. The pieces you have read draw on many traditions, and I have picked and chosen those which suit my purpose. In many cases, I have made up my own traditions. I need hardly add (I hope!) that none of the spells or charms in the Witchsight section is anything but a pinch of fancy. Candles, water and flowers have been used in an attempt to cast spells in the past, but I have never researched the exact ingredients. I have never seen a ghost, met a unicorn, or expected to marry a fairy. but I acknowledge the power and strength of their traditions, and thoroughly enjoyed inventing my own.
My poetry, like my characters, owes something to many old traditions, and something to my own invention. Apart from the acrostics, none of the pieces is written in any strict or set poetical form. The influences, as you can probably tell, come mostly from the 19th Century, with a nod towards the earlier forms of Modern English in Tudor times.
Here is a magical song about those most magical flowers, the roses.
Roses
Blow to me, winds, from over the sea
Sigh from the islands bejeweling the deep,
Aquarius pouring her waters forever
Returning them all to their sleep.
Here the magician strides dark on the land
Pacing the moorlands to shadow the plain,
Deep is the rock as it dreams underground
Holding its face to the rain.
His heart is enclosed in a garland of thorn,
The lightning commands in his eyes,
But oh, the magician has roses to give;
Roses his caution denies.
Blow to me, winds, from over the hill,
Breathe from the woodlands that shine in the sun
Apples are perfuming Eden divine
There, where the magic's begun.
Here the wise woman is gathering herbs,
Secretly choosing them under the moon,
Mysterious scents rising into the night,
Bestowing their virtue too soon.
Her heart full of sorrow is withering fast,
Her subtlety lives by the word,
The roses she never can gather herself
Sing their bright love songs unheard.
Blow to me winds, from over the sky,
Clear from the salt of the sparkling shore,
Tears on my eyelashes tracing a path,
Written in sea-sirens' lore.
Here the magician joins hands with the witch,
Sharing a kiss by enveloping night,
Tangling limbs in the cloak of desire,
Love they must hide from the light.
Crimson the roses that bloom in his breast,
Answering crimson has she,
Torn from her blood by his garland of thorns,
Locked with a forfeited key.
Blow to me winds, from out of the past,
Weep from the innocent mornings we knew,
Bleak is my soul in the breath of today,
The hours of our loving so few.
Perhaps in a night of the eons to come,
The thicket of thorns may be broken away
But many a frost of the winter's repose
Will it take for the blooming to stay
His heart is enclosed in a garland of thorn,
Her subtlety lives by the word,
But oh, the magician has roses to give;
With all of their love songs unheard.
Blow to me, winds, from over the sea
Breathe from the woodlands that shine in the sun
Tears on my eyelashes tracing a path,
For the magic of roses undone.