Rapid fire posting here while I have an internet connection. For the dverse prompt.
Could this ever have been me,
the crouching, curled about myself, in the never-quite-warm?
Did I ever sniff night air and curl deeper into the ground,
the cave, the nest, the hollow tree, finding comfort in the insect-busy earth?
Beyond, in the twitching, shifting half-light, half-shadow, is life,
for those who never shake the touch of death from fur or feather.
What do I ever feel but faded, sifted echoes of the life the sun gives?
I tread and and I tramp with shop-bought boots, the frosty grass.
And though I peer into the branches overhead,
where the watchful hawk sits and the mist hangs in tatters,
no cries fall that I can hear,
no lesson learned from the leafless limbs.
Leafless limbs, just beautiful.
You’re in a sombre mood today, aren’t you?
I was just freezing cold when I wrote it! The sun’s up now, freezing mist has gone.
Beautiful and sunny here too.
Now give me sth more positive, I’m in a good mood today.
I’ll see what I can do 🙂
A gorgeous meditation on life, not just life in the wild. I can especially relate to:
“What do I ever feel but faded, sifted echoes of the life the sun gives?”
Thank you 🙂 Yes, you’re right. It isn’t a simple comparison of what we feel with an animal’s perceptions, more the idea that we are just so out of it, the real.
I like this sombre lament very much indeed.
I’m pleased you do. I wasn’t going to do this prompt because I didn’t really see what it was driving at, there being such a huge gulf between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Then I thought I may as well say that in a poem.
There is a barrier we can’t cross. (K)
I think so. And when we make animals do what we want we destroy something inside them.
That is true. Humans do want to control everything…
We’re creating a frightening world where we are entirely dependent on technologies none of us can reproduce on our own.
Our survival skills are definitely lacking.
It’s not just the modern know-how that defeats most of us, it’s the old-fashioned house building, fire-building, food preparing etc that would just kill most of us with the physical effort!
Thoughtful, inspiring poem, Jane. I felt the fear of extinction in this, whether literal or metaphoric.
Thank you 🙂 I feel we are so remote from animal life, I never really see connections. If I do, like when the cat destroys something because nobody’s getting the biscuits out, it has to be purely accidental 🙂
I really love the watchful hawk…. being part but still separated from your meditations… great writing.
Thanks Bjorn. You’re on the right lines there. It’s the idea of being outside the world of the hawk and the things that live in holes in the ground. Ever since we stopped living in caves, I suppose.
We might be missing a lot with just the “faded, sifted echoes”, but at least we experience them.
That’s true. And I wouldn’t want to live in a cave or a tree either.
I feel like hibernating deep down for warmth Jane ~ But yes, I don’t think we can ever know what if feels like underneath the fur or feather ~
I specially like this part:
Beyond, in the twitching, shifting half-light, half-shadow, is life,
for those who never shake the touch of death from fur or feather.
Thanks Grace. When I see animals performing tricks, I wonder what misery is going on inside them, not understanding why or what they are being forced to do.
I think all we can do is admire a mind and being and instinct so different yet in a way so much like our own. Very introspective today, Jane. I enjoyed this one very much.
Thanks Sarah. I wish we could all just accept differences and let them live in peace.
Reblogged this on Die Erste Eslarner Zeitung – Aus und über Eslarn, sowie die bayerisch-tschechische Region!.
🙂
As you can see, Jane, I’ve been catching up and I’ve got to you, finally! I love that your title is a question and that you continue to question in the body of the poem. I like the chill I get from the line:
‘the crouching, curled about myself, in the never-quite-warm’
and the way the speaker wonders about hibernating. Some humans still do. But at the same time we have grown so far apart, which you express so eloquently in the lines:
‘Beyond, in the twitching, shifting half-light, half-shadow, is life,
for those who never shake the touch of death from fur or feather’.
I love the tenuous connection between the speaker and the watchful hawk in that one moment when the mist hangs in tatters.
I’m so pleased you get this poem, Kim. We’ve just moved into this old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, with absolutely no mod cons at all. The wildlife, shrews, fieldmice, dormice etc get in under the doors or chew through the masonry. The only heating is an open fire in the bedroom and a tiny woodburner in the study. The windows look out onto trees and fields and the larger wildlife that can’t get in under the doors. There is no noise except a distant tractor sometimes, and the birds and foxes. I feel as though the ‘real’ world is so close, yet, like the hawk on the wire, just out of touch.