More cranes

More cranes

I can hear the beating of wings above the voice of the wind,
the feather-fuelled drive to the northlands,
the joyous cold hearth-lands.

Not singing, this, no sweet melodious notes,
dripping celestial nectar,
but a hoarse, raucous calling,
that rattles the spring sky from end to end.

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Questioning

Today the weather changed again, and the first cranes flew over going north.

Questioning

Days of questioning
between sun-spills and cloud-shadow,
the sharp sting of cold
when the wind snaps,

the plaintive sound
of a kitten crying
somewhere among the trees,

and high, higher than we clay-footed can dream,
the wild, unreasoning crank-cronk
of returning cranes,

that turns all questions to answers,
the same, ever-repeating circular answer—
home.

February walk

The day started with thrushes and a deer barking, the sun shining through early morning mist. I put on wellies to walk through the fields, past the woods along the stream, stopped to take a photo of some of the neighbour’s daffodils, the ones the sheep have left.

I always take a stick just in case, but by the time I reached the château, the tracks of wild boar were so fresh they were making me nervous.

I turned for home as the cranes were passing overhead, in their noisy, undisciplined formations. The wind was fierce up there, the skeins dissolving and the birds circling in directionless flocks. Tired and hungry, none wanted to take the leader’s place. In bird world, that’s the hardest, least enviable place of all.

Flying home

Photo©Cayambe

I have just watched the first mass migration of the spring, perhaps a thousand cranes in just one of the skeins, flying in reasonably ordered formation, heading north east. Their trumpeting call is triumphant, sonorous, stay in line, don’t stray, keep in the slipstream if you’re tired.

Home calls, spring, the nest, and the mate for life to help raise the new chicks. No one is left behind, all take turns to fray a path through the winds. Only birds, but can we claim the same honour?

wild sky

cloud-streaked blue rain-rippled

ocean of feathers

Haiku sequence for homecomings

 

an ocean of cloud

billows on a grey sea

rain in the wind

 

through sea mist

and rolling cloud the geese

row home

 

racket in the sky

arrowhead pointed homeward

blackbird rummages

Microfiction: Cranes

The longest journey starts with just one step. Whoever said that probably wasn’t thinking of that step at the cellar head that I missed, sending me arse over tit into eternity. They were most likely imagining some sage-looking Asiatic with all his belongings tied in a neat bundle and slung over his broad shoulders, facing an empty, sinuous road with, in the distance, a range of misty blue mountains, swooping cranes and a new life beneath the boughs of a picturesque pine forest.

I wish I still had two legs beneath me, feet ready to walk the distance and a blue yonder beckoning, instead of this. This what? This falling? Shouldn’t it have stopped by now? By rights I should have bashed my brains out on the stone flags of the cellar floor minutes ago. Still the blackness flies past in rags and tatters. Not really black, more grey, with lighter patches and the soft touch of feathers. The feeling of falling changes to one of upward movement, of soaring, and the pitch black of the cellar is growing lighter, a misty blue. In the new light, I see the tattered, feathery darkness swooping past.

Cranes.

If you like the shorts, why not try the longs?