Furious love

This is for TJ’s Household Haiku prompt. I hope haibun is included. The poem is inspired by watching a sparrowhawk trying to catch a peregrine falcon that had stolen a fledgling from its nest in the church spire.

The prompt words are Well & Sweet.

Photo ©Dr Raju Kasambe

 

There are no words, just cries of rage to scream the injustice of it all. What images unfurl behind the yellow irised eyes of the hawk robbed of her young? Red rage or white-fluffed memories of wide-beaked young? I watch with feet anchored in the clay, the aerial tragedy of loss and grief, and rage and hunger, and instinctive urges. Perhaps the falcon has young of his own and makes no difference between the pigeon squab and the future raptor. His wing beats, smooth as water, steel and silver in the sun, twist and turn, a feathered cascade, to beat off the smaller bird. And all the while, the short, final stretch of life, the mother screams, heads lift to see, and the baby dangles, helpless from the peregrine’s claws. Does it strain to see its mother’s furious, desperate flight, and does it hope, even a little bit, that a mother will prevail against death?

Clear as well water,

the sky, silver-barred and plumed,

sweet as honeyed dusk.

Skylark

A poem inspired by Jilly’s quote from Jim Harrison

“Tiring of language, the mind takes flight”  ~ Jim Harrison

Photo ©Jacob Spinks

Can you hear the hawk crying in the wind,

or the twig snap beneath a dainty hoof?

Does the rain fill your ears with music

or your heart with chill?

All the words that drop from the leaves at morning

will not suffice to show you how the sky is blue,

if you never dream to touch the stars,

nor can they paint the song of the lark,

if this handful of warm feathers does not break your heart.

The colour of frost

 

There was a time,

when honey-drunk

we soared

with music whispering

in our wings.

Now, ships that pass

in the night.

 

 

Time devours

the soft heart of the day.

Morning comes, red as fire

but at my dark window,

ice, steel-blue and hard,

kisses the cold glass

with ghosts of the night.

 

Night touches the sky

with soft wings,

old songs fill the evening,

and we dance in starlight

as a river of music

runs into the morning.

 

 

Between life and the fall,

we wander.

Root to bough,

spring to winter,

dawn to dusk,

the dark cycles rolls,

until the rose quiet shade

is the colour of frost.

 

 

Floods and tides

Maybe it’s coincidence since we were talking about Shakespearean sonnets yesterday, but Jilly’s next (for me) Jim Harrison quote has a distinctly Shakespearean feel.

“There is a human wildness held beneath the skin that finds all barriers brutishly unbearable” Jim Harrison

“There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune” Shakespeare (Brutus).

 

To leap into the raging tide and risk the swell,

Or suffer the battering on the rocks, takes courage.

Perhaps, but what, dear Brutus, of the tide

That washes soft and sweet upon the strand,

And, with so little bombast fills the pools with glitter?

Wise men tug the coat sleeves of the fools,

Though not to stop them in their maddened flight.

But in their wake, the slipstream of their folly fly,

The path beat clear for the cunning and the keen.

Not wise men, angels, I hear you murmur—

Is that how you see yourself, Brutus,

As you stand so straight, your golden armour

Borrowing the splendor of the sun?

Give me the hungry and the lean,

For they know the price of courage, the toll of bravery.

I will take instead the hand of Cassius of my heart,

And lead him safe across the water,

Away from the shadow of such men

As the wide arch of the ranged empire call heroes.

The unasked question

This is a second, very rapid attempt at the dverse challenge to write a free verse sonnet. No rhyme this time, but I do like a rhythm to my words. Still not sure if this fits the bill.

 

Will you take me with you when you go?

The question hovers on my silent lips,

And will you want to find me by your side,

Or will my slender wingbeats just annoy?

 

The journey’s long to the place that we dreamed

Together, when the world turned at our will,

When we were hero swans that braved the storm

Together, and would stay so for all time.

 

The curve in your flight dips across the moon,

Your silhouette so clear cuts like a knife,

Slices through the tangles of the years.

 

Such wing strokes no cold buffered wind can stop—

I rush to join the currents wild and warm

That weave among the threads of our frayed past.

She asks her love to dance with her

This poem is for the dverse prompt and is inspired by Jilly’s quote from Jim Harrison

“As with dancing you have to learn the steps”

The challenge is to write a sonnet in free verse. With no rhyme or rhythm, the lines don’t fall into strict units of quatrains and tercets, for me at least, so I’ve stuck to classic Shakespearean sonnet form. A cop out, I know, but I find a sonnet quite hard enough to write without adding an extra twist to the thumbscrews.

Photo ©Tobiasvde

There is never a teacher for this dance,

No more than to guide the fledgling’s first flight,

To fly or to fall, in the hands of chance,

Sleep or the wolf may come with the night.

Will we untangle the mess that we made?

Our steps tripped and faltered, we parted ways,

Like sand castles crumbled, the plans we laid,

The dream of the future obscured in haze.

There must have been love to have left such pain,

As there must have been music to draw us on,

There must have been sun once though now there’s rain,

The piper once played sweet who now is gone.

Watch my eyes at sunset, moonrise to see,

The star-stepped path that brings you back to me.

Never

Songs again. This is in response to the Day 2 quote of Jilly’s challenge:

“That morning the sun forgot to rise”  Jim Harrison.

 

The morning the deer come no more to the brake,

And the sight of your face is like cloud in blue skies,

When the thrushes are silent along the still lake,

Is the morning the sun will forget how to rise.

 

When the evening star falls through the oaks in the wood,

And the tides of the ocean cease their ebb and flow,

When the moon’s face reflected is red as shed blood,

Is the evening I’ll tell you I want you to go.