The Bluebird

The Bluebird

In yesterdays of peppermint 

and temps perdu, you lived with me in

the longhouse, grasshopper thin from fiddling, 

a silversmith of backspin. You carved me

a primitive bluebird

put it rounded in my hand

sitting drawn down

on its toes, fledge-etched in cerulean

soap-smooth, autumn-colored circles

at its too-wise eyes.

You smiled when it stirred,
flipped up

a stopsignal tailfeather,

gaped its open throat

for a worm-friend mother.

I set it among the other birds;

no thing of mine, your gift

but wild its own.

Oracle crows, inquisitor cardinals,

insipid chickens pecked it--

but the bluebird rose in

flutterform arpeggios,

and flew

not to me,

not to you.

~April 2016

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Kerry's Get Listed: Compound Words

(I have used some from the lists and made up others.)

temps perdu: Fr. for wasted time, lost time

Image:  L'oiseau bleu, 1968, Marc Chagall, via wikiart.org

The Wizard's Gift

 

The Wizard's Gift

It came in a box.

Death wrapped in red foil

and silver ribbon

glowing with night's own light,

the dark knowing of its nature.

The wind brought her stiff broom

to sweep the air clean of brimstone stink

but you stood and laughed and reeked

in the midnight sun.

You wore those solemn robes

like stiff wings freshly feathered.

A pretense of hooded eyes cerulean blue 

shone tarry through the snarl of

each jetblack lash, yet under your

velvet calm was a constant rustling.

Anyone not spellbound in tranced oblivion

would see the barbed tailtip of your starved familiar

thrashing with a scorpion's steel sharp sting.

You held the ocean out in a crystal cup,

tiny hearts tied to the mast, a thousand ships

set sailing in the devil's brandyglass.

Windtossed I watched the mousemaid's fallen tear

grow the deepest pool in a black moon-strangled grove

where the winking fox set the crippled rabbit free

and one absent swipe rang the raven's dinner bell.

Down down went the chambered shell

to the scarlet aquifer;

you curved your fingered claws over my white hand 

until they twined

and flowed together as grains of sand

merge in a dune indistinguishable

and we pulled the fullness up

to our glittering husks from the butcher's well

to drink together the bloodred wine of hell.

~July 2012
edited, October 2015

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Tuesday Platform

If you'd like to hear the poem read by the author, click below:

Image: The Wizard, by Edward Burne-Jones

Public Domain, via Wikipaintings.org