N J Griffiths

Author: Nia Jane

  • Definitions

    I heard them in the park.

    After dark, two glass eyed women

    like forgotten trees, waiting.

    Through the silence their

    voices sang, floating the hills

    and swimming the valleys of my youth;

    winding the worn out path

    to me. I stood there,

    for a moment, almost alone.

    Thrust back to her voice.

    To all of their voices. Those

    women of steel

    of copper,

    of quilted pillows and quiet revolution,

    whose laughs could tear a mountain down,

    whose lightning  almost certainly had.

    In just a drop

    of their quilted voice,

    I could see the charcoaled skyline rise

    and fall before me like lifetimes;

    melodic and chaotic.

    I walked on. Past those

    almost forgotten fragments

    of home.

     

     

    Nia Griffiths, 2017

    © all rights reserved

  • Improv

    In the sway of the blues

    that followed,

    I think I remember

    a cry. Separate from the

    melody and in memory

    a beat

    which danced amongst

    the guitar strings.

     

    And if I were to listen

    closely,

    intimately,

    I think I might

    hear the bars,

    which surrounded it,

    pause;

     

    wait for some

    small thing

    that never quite

    returns.

     

    Nia Griffiths, 2017

    © all rights reserved

  • Stricken

    On the edges of the trees

    I heard him

    first

    refracting light and love

    from the leaves.

     

    When the chords were struck,

    they stung.

    And in the white light of the dawn

    he had sung my lungs to dust.

     

    I wonder, still, if he could see

    straight through them

    then,

    as I know he does now.

     

    The trees beckoned,

    leaves trembling.

    They saw in my eyes

    the wolf

    that tore the stag into

    raw flesh

    and blood, and bone.

     

    Yet at their edges

    when I heard him

    first

    I was the deer

    again.

     

     

    Nia Griffiths, 2017

    © all rights reserved