In her first English collection of poems "In Search of the Other" (The Elkir Press 2005), Scharlie Meeuws uses a variety of moods to express thought. The book appeared in a very limited edition, for Scharlie was not keen to share her poems with the outside world. Encouraged by friends, she slowly started posting her poems on various writing sites on the internet, where she soon gained a number of fans, who would delight in her sometimes unusual language and imaginative use of rhyme and metre in spite of an often serious poetical outlook.
YOU AND ME
You and me we both
Are born tightrope walkers
Balancing the act
Of living precariously.
We are trained
To look upwards
Towards the blue skies
And the airiness of being.
One glance downwards
Could annihilate and
Start the spiral to disaster.
Lift your balance stick
Use it my love
Keep listening
To the applause around us
We both will meet in the middle
Changing places effortlessly.
Judging comes easy when
Decisions are dreamlike.
When we do reach
The end of the rope on either side
In beautiful unison
Our somersaults downward
are spectacular and the clapping
is for the indomitable spirit only.
Your voice
Your voice is like the opium for my soul.
You call, I come,
you draw it out of me
with urging gentleness
and softer melody.
I'm like your snake
who dreamlike moves and goes
towards your call and blindly follows
its sound of all
enchanting persuasiveness,
The up and down
of leading and of pleading
and endless promises
out of control…
It only needs your sound
to prise me out
high off my ground
towards the source
and magic instrument,
spellbound
for quite a moment when
the music's lingering,
my head is trembling
and my tongue shows out,
I taste the air
and then surrendering
fall back into my place
all tired out...
You've done it, there again
and without clout,
my master, sorcerer
by soft determination.
You've got me where
you wanted me to be.
Your smile is faint
and so contentedly.
I owned a bird with an ugly voice
I owned a bird with an ugly voice
whose song crackled the peace
I had him barred in a cage outside
till he learnt some tunes.
I wanted his melodies,
so I trained him on little tasks.
singing him all the songs I knew.
At first standing near his cage,
I heard him croak like a frog,
splattering, spitting out his seeds.
then I reached him some lettuce,
made him honey with peppermint tea
for his throat. He kept silent.
I schooled him in music,
played him Chopin and Mozart,
a hard apprenticeship in learning to listen.
He flopped on his perch, wing-flapping.
He opened his beak letting out sounds
mingled with the patter of raindrops,
the rush and the hush of the wind
creating his own melodies out of tune.
One night, after a long silence, the final test:
I leant out of my bedroom window.
A full moon. And then when it happened,
first a secretive sound, low in notes,
swelling into a crescendo, higher and higher.
I stood motionless, struck with desire.
I hardly slept. In the morning I put up
the sign: Nightingale for Hire.
Under Amber Skies, written by author and poet Jill Eisnaugle, is a wonderful collection of rhyming poetry guaranteed to please every reader. In this, her second book, she writes of new friendships kindled, as well as old friendships solidified. She g
