Yet Another Nature Poem

Today I was supposed to discover something. So I remembered discovering a little nest with baby Stellar's Jays in it. They were astonishing ugly and I was amazed that something as stunning as a Stellar's Jay should have an offspring that looked like that..... but for all that, they were sort of adorable too.... And then mom dive bombed me and I left her family in peace. 

Discovery

I climbed a tree and found a nest,

A little nest of twig and string

With unfledged jaybirds, loud within,

Noisy, new and ravenous.

They were ugly and undressed,

Feeble, blind, unfeathered things,

​Crying mouths, altricial skin,

Timid, weak and tremulous.

And yet I loved their ugliness,

Th​e new life​,​ bare and trembling

The ​plaintive calling​, hungry, thin​,

Fragile, fair and wondrous.

I looked at latent loveliness

The hidden flight in useless wings,

The faint first colour, coming in​:​

Blue and black and lustrous.

The End of the Drought

Today's prompt was "a sound". Being a piper, my mind naturally went to that deep, elemental drone of bagpipes. But I figure the pipes are a good back up subject, and besides, it is too easy to go over the top with rhapsodical praise of the Great Instrument. And then I remembered a morning not too long ago, when the snow started melting, and there were little shorebirds wandering in the meadow rather than by the lake, with the worried-sounding little Killdear, calling from out of the grass and dry wildflowers of last year. So I wrote about that instead.

The Marsh, March 2017

The Marsh is flooded

And the well-known ways

Are rivers now, impassible.

The sound of water is everywhere.

Drought has vanished

Like a dream.

Where once was meadow

The Wood Ducks play

In waves of water and of grass.

The sky reflects a thousand times.

Cloud are racing

In every stream.

The Killdeer from shoreline

Far have strayed

And keen amid the willow breaks.

The Marsh gives back the plaintive sound

Of their crying

Spring! Spring! Spring!

In which the Challenge Becomes Challenging

I don't know about you, but I have never found the Periodic Table of Elements to be poetic. (Unless, of course, one is listening to Tom Lehrer singing it to the tune of the Modern Major General) So when the Elements (as in the ones on the table, and not weather, nor water, wind, earth and fire) was given as a prompt, I was temporarily flummoxed. I did not want to be boring and go for gold or silver. Nor did I want to be goofy, and go on about the benefits of potassium and iron. So I spent a few minutes looking at the Periodic Table this morning, and came across iridium. I had no idea iridium was an element. My whole association with it is as the thing most fountain pen nibs are tipped with, if not made entirely out of. So, coming up with no better inspiration, I composed this. (And yes, I now want to purchase a new Shaeffer Tuckaway :-)

GOLD AND IRIDIUM

 For Purchase:

    Shaeffer Tuckaway

    Lifetime Edition:

    White Dot too.

    In good condition,

    Some slight scuffing:

    Prussian Blue.

    Fine, gold nib tipped

    With Iridium

    Nearly New.

(I Buy it, Of Course.)

    How strange the wedding

    Of the two metals

    Now at hand:

    Softest and densest

    Set to one purpose...

    I intend

    Upon good paper

    To set down poetry

    From that pen.

Early Spring

I am constitutionally predisposed to cool weather. I love autumn and winter, but more to the point, I am comfortable in them. I dislike summer quite intensely, as heat and I are not simpatico. I have, however, a complicated relationship with spring. I do not like early spring time. There is mud, and snow mold, and always the scattered detritus of humanity, which is somehow everywhere now that the snow is gone, even though there was no sign of it before winter came. After winter's chill and enchanted glory, I find it all quite demoralising. But once that bleak period between the white beauty, and wild flower time is past, and we have spring properly - all bright, green grass and gentle sun.... well, in that small margin of time, before the summer heat comes and the words is still soft and cool and alive, then I love spring almost as much as autumn.

We were supposed to write a beginning, or an ending poem today. Or, if you were really ambitious, you could write a beginning-and-an-end poem. I drew a blank most of the day, mostly on account of a poem I have been working on intermittently for months, which is a beginning sort of poem, but still has that one transitional line that will not come out the way I want, and is therefore holding up the rest of it. I ended up setting for a poem about this time of year:

 The In Between Time

Winter is passing

   And burning away

Snow lingers only

   Where shadows lay.

In the bright morning

   I mourn for the loss

Of needle ice

   And white hoarfrost.

But the smell of Spring

   And Blackbirds’ call;

The tiny greeness,

   Impossibly small

The willows budding

   And snow-melt rills

Soothe my winter-heart:

   There is beauty still.

Monday in Passion Week

Today's prompt was a fill in the blank thing: The (blank) of Love, and we were to decided what word went in the blank, use that as the poem's title and off you go. 

I do not like love poems.... Well, I suppose that is not entirely accurate. I like Robert Burns' love poems well enough, and I fancy if I put my mind to it, there are a number of other poets whose romantic verses have moved my. But I do not like writing love poems. They are not really my thing. Indeed, any sort of highly personal writing is far out of my comfort zone. I write about things, preferably things which can be expressed mythically (if you take my meaning), things that are universal, perhaps even emotional, but in which I am never more than a passing figure. I was not excited about today's prompt, nor did I have much hope for it. But I did manage this:

The Debt of Love

(Passion Week, 2017)

You wrote Your Love against the sky

In iron, gall, and Your own red blood.

I turned and left You hanging there - 

I thought it no more than my due.

I took in stride the dying words

You wrote in pain with blood and wood.

I mouthed my thanks and walked away

And took no farther thought of You.

But in this Dark Night of the Soul,

I read those love notes, writ in blood.

I know the burden of my choice:

Too late, too little have I loved You.

In Which I Despair

The prompt was a "not today" poem. I could have done something heroic. Instead I did this:

Triolet

A day might come when I get some sleep
And wake refreshed to greet the day:
No nightly fears, nor troubles keep
Away the slightest hope of sleep.
At 3 a.m. awake I lay.
I'm weary of counting unnumbered sheep:
A day may come when I get some sleep
 - Today is not that day.

Yes, that is sad. I know it. But day two is done, and maybe tomorrows prompt will not inspire another such sorry excuse for verse.

I am off to try for that elusive sleep......

Winter's on the Wing...

When last I took the time to write something for this blog, I spoke of the resolution I had made to be hopeful and trust in God, even if things look hopeless and trust is hard. This is, in retrospect, the sort of difficult, foolish resolution that one should only make with the full realisation that God takes you at your word when you do so. I was aware of what I was doing when I made that resolution, but I did not really expect God to test it quite so thoroughly as He has these last couple months. I have no intention of complaining about the hand He is dealing out through His wisdom. Nor, for that matter, to imply that the difficult situations in which I have so unwantedly found myself do not have the faint, curling new-growth of Something Good Coming about them - they do. There is - improbably - Hope in the midst of a decided Vale of Tears; Hope that shines like a single, bright prick of starlight - a solitary guide in the unfriendly darkness. What I do mean to say, is that sometimes, one is so busy being hopeful and trusting (with the full awareness of how often one fails of that resolve) there is not much time for the careful, thoughtful Ideas one longs to write about. I would apologise for this, but instead I merely ask that you bear with me. I want to write about things that matter, nor content myself with babbling.

**************************************************

I saw a young Hawk take a Meadowlark in midair. It was during the first week of Lent, a bright, cold morning, heavy with frost, gilded with the first golden sunlight that means that spring is coming, for all the chill. There was a brief struggle between the two beautiful, dappled creatures; cries of hunger and distress, the flare and beat of wings, and a plunge - Mors et Vita duello...

It has been a wet, long winter here in mountains of the Far west. Heavy storms, one after another, bringing at times, rain, at others, snow. Wild always, with an unmitigated sea-wind driving them; a hard winter for the foolish, hardy thing that make their homes in such high and inhospitable places. 

The Hawk was hungry. It tossed the lovely breast feathers - yellow and grey, soft and warm, so that the air was full of the ghost of the Meadowlark. It keened as it ate, like a small child, humming at its dinner. The other birds, well hidden in the surrounding pines, scolded it at first . Jays, and Junco, Chickadees and Kinglets, called out together - in warning, perhaps, or in fear. Then one by one they fell silent, until the Hawk and the Meadowlark were alone, in a circle of silence. There was a slight ring around them, of pale yellow down, already being blowing away in the cold morning wind, a drop or two of blood, glowing warmly against the snow. 

When the first edge of its hunger was dulled, the Hawk flew into the willows to finish his meal. The willows were ruddy with the first flush of wakening sap. The brilliantly, dappled breast of the Hawk turned him into a creature of snow and shadow, easily lost in the willow shade. He ate in a small storm of flying feathers, methodically now, no longer a hungry child, but as a man might, at the end of a day's hard labour. He would occasionally look out into the solitary silence around it - his fine head like the profile on a coin, his eyes glowing, beautiful both in design and skill.

I went to look at the spot, when he finally flew away with the last of the Meadowlark. Does that sound macabre to you - not only that I should have taken such joy in watching the terrible dance of life and death played out in the morning before me, but that, when it was done, I should go to study the place once it had been left abandoned? There is a solemn beauty about such places - and that little hollow amongst the willow shoots and pine boughs was no exception. There was a sunset of colour there - wing feathers, striped buff and rufus, the astonishing yellow feathers from the Meadowlark's breast, the small spots of bright orange blood, on fire amongst them. I have not seen a great many kills in my life time, but whenever I have come across them, I am always surprised by the littleness of blood, and the diversity of feathers. They were surprisingly alike in colour, the Hawk and the Meadowlark, all bars and dapples. There was a faint, foolish hope that one of those bright feathers had fallen from the hunter. 

Perhaps it was because Lent was newly upon me, or because of the Latin lines from the Easter antiphon that came into my mind at the sight of the birds, but there was a feeling of great content that came with seeing Hawk and the Meadowlark, the hunter and hunted, life and death, in glourious combat locked. There was sorrow for the Meadowlark - sorrow that such a brightly beautiful, singing creature - designed by God to be pleasing to eye and ear - should die in blood upon the snow. But there was joy - even exultation - in the glory and power of the Hawk, in it doing so perfectly, precisely what it was designed to do, and in the one great beauty giving life to the other. There was a sense of splendor, a right ordering of things, the peace of death at the end of life well spent. The Hand of God showed in all of it - the love with which He shaped and shaded His beautiful little creatures, the joy He gave and took in the making. He knows each one of them, more intimately than a mother knows her child, and suffers none of them fall without putting His hand out to catch or bless. And it seemed to me to be a parable - that sometimes, God takes away a good thing in us, that we treasure, not to cause us pain or sorrow, but so that an even better good thing might grow in its place and be nourished by the good that came before. 

**************************************************

One of my soft resolutions this year - in addition to 'hardening my heart with Hope' was to take a more disciplined approach to my poetry. It has been a rather hit and miss endevour, with only one full poem coming to fruition since the New Year. However, in an effort to force myself into a more serious approach, I decided to go for the Poem A Day Challenge again this year. I intend to write every day, though I might not necessarily post them here as regularly. But in the spirit of getting the month off to a proper start, here is the little thing I did today, in response to the prompt "reminiscence":

I remember when I met you.
You were younger than I'd expected,
With red hair, I'd always fancied -
Though I'd  forgotten, til I met you.

You were easy for me to talk to
- Me, eccentric, shy and silent -
Found delight in conversation,
When I talked and sat beside you.

You were good, but wild also,
Fierce and knightly, faithful, errant,
Who wakened Joy and Hope within me:
My bravest self I was with you.

But we are old now, me and you:
Sorrow between us, our chances spent.
We've traded our Joy for hard-bought peace...
I miss who we were, when I met you.