Bonedancer
Bonedancer, hear me.
I sing
the song
that
burns the candle
here
beside the flume of dark
where
Styx meets bright Tiger
where
Persephone falters
eating
one sweet seed after another
too long
too dry to stop.
Bonedancer, fly
in the
dream I dream
of the
totem wolf talking
of
skinshifters walking
where
the waking's hard
but the
sleeping is harder
on memory's cold stones,
loser's bloat and bones.
Bonedancer, pivot
above the
look
that
shakes a threshing
from a
sowing
that
calls to its own
on strings of wild
violin eyes, hiss
your mother
bird's chorus, chuffling
your chicks towards a white sun
candle
that burns in the grass.
~November
2012
Posted
for real toads
Challenge:
Transforming Friday
This did not
start out to be a poem about turkey buzzards, and perhaps still isn't, but
Hannah's prompt gave it shape. There are many of them here where I live, and their intricate wheeling and sailing on the rise and fall of thermals is a joy to watch.
Process
notes: In Greek(and later Roman) myth, Persephone was a chthonic goddess , daughter of Demeter, goddess of the
harvest, and Zeus. Kidnapped by Hades, she became a goddess of the dead, but
also of the land's rebirth. After her kidnapping devastated the croplands due
to her mother's grief, Hades was persuaded to return her from the nether
regions, but first he offered her a pomegranate, of which she ate four
seeds, dooming her to spend four months
of every year below the earth.
From wikipedia: "The
Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura), also known in some North
American regions as the turkey buzzard (or just buzzard)… is a scavenger
and feeds almost exclusively on carrion. It finds its food using its keen eyes
and sense of smell, flying low enough to detect the gases produced by the
beginnings of the process of decay in dead animals. In flight, it uses thermals
to move through the air, flapping its wings infrequently. It roosts in large
community groups. Lacking a syrinx—the vocal organ of birds—its only
vocalizations are grunts or low hisses.
It nests in caves, hollow trees, or thickets. Each year it generally raises two
chicks."
Image: by dw_ross, on flick'r
Shared under
a creative commons license
Beautiful, Hedge. Brilliantly written. It takes me right there. I remember watching the eagles drifting on the air thermals in Tofino. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteBonedancer ... dancing to a primal beat ... awesome.
ReplyDeleteYou are SO the real thing, Hedge. This is flawless.
ReplyDeleteThanks, MZ--means a lot coming from you.
DeleteFly in the dream i dream of the totem wolf talking
ReplyDelete~what comment could be enough?
You make magic real enough for me to believe
Thank you for stopping by and reading, rick. Since you have disabled comments, just want to take the opportunity to mention I think you are writing well, and have enjoyed your last two poems.
DeleteTurkey vultures circle here, too, Hedge, and captivate me as well. The moniker, Bonedancer, is ideal. I love the way you play out the concept of original sin, retelling Persephone's story of indulgence and consequence within the context of your setting.
ReplyDeleteThanks all. Much appreciated.
ReplyDeleteBonedancer is the perfect name for your protagonist. It contains something of the oxymoron a carrion bird inherits at birth: the grace of flight on huge wings, the grisly fight over bones. Your imagery relating to death in the first stanza is very apt, as is the references to totem animals. I thought the final stanza was just brilliant in tying all the threads together, and for the lines:
ReplyDeletethat calls to its own
on strings of wild
violin eyes.
I'm glad you ended with the nest, and rebirth in the chicks and the white sun.
i def love all the refs in this hedge...the styx meeting the tiger and persephone....the skin walkers in the second...the sowing and threshing harvest refs...violin eyes, very cool....lots of goodness in this...smiles.
ReplyDeletePersephone. A goddess with a beautiful name, but plagued with so many responsibilities. I think about flight and the candles. Scrolling around your thoughtful page. Listening to Paul Simon, pondering Stevens."...ohohohohoh....I'm going to up for a while..."
ReplyDeleteYou always educate me!! We have them here in NC... I drove by one as it pulled its head out of a bloated carcass of a dear.
ReplyDeleteon memory's cold stones,
loser's bloat and bones.
Just love the sound of that!
Wonderful work, Joy. Large birds, perhaps ungainly on the ground, are a wonder to watch as they float on the thermals.
ReplyDeleteI love "your mother bird's chorus, chuffling your chicks" — it almost makes the carrion bird seem cuddly in its maternal duties. "Chuffling" is a delightful word.
K
Wonderful take Joy! The eagles have been misunderstood. More of their prowess in flight against others and their sharp talons are given prominence all these while. You've done well to partly dispel this.
ReplyDeleteHank
Dayum, GET OUT. You did that thing again. Don't blink at me like you don't know what I mean. You start out good, I'm digging the cool title, and the language and rhymes of the opening two stanzas...then you unfurl that final stanza and it's like, "Try THIS, Bo Peep", and I'm yanking out hair by the handful. I had one strand left, but the "violin eyes" did for that.
ReplyDeletethe image you chose is striking, Hedge...I love the angle and the light coming through the feathers!!
ReplyDeleteThe tone you've created here is unique...I love how you've woven threads of Greek mythology with Native American and the distinct hedgewitch strands to create this magical folklore-y feeling piece.
I enjoyed this a lot!!
These lines stood out to my ears:
"the look
that shakes a threshing
from a sowing
that calls to its own
on strings of wild
violin eyes,"
Love that!!
:)'s and thanks a bunch for transforming this Friday!
Yes, a very beautiful poem. I love that you start and return to the candle - first in the dark and wet (I guess) with the flume and Styx- which is such a good word with its sound both of flame and plume - and then with the white sun and grass. Styx is especially good here I think too because of the underworld but also because it sounds like sticks - and you have all these elements of water, grass, stone, bone - And so interesting that when Persephone is in that Styx/flumey place she is so dry--
ReplyDeleteSo I really liked the Persphone stuff - and the sense of the mother at the end = urging her chicks into the sun, but nonetheless the most striking lines had to do with the memory - the sleeping/waking -
where the waking's hard
but the sleeping is harder
on memory's cold stones,
loser's bloat and bones.
This is pretty brutal1 But the music and the chicks and the candles somehow save the day - light in a dark place. k.
Thank you, karin. I liked flume there, too--it was a bit of a fluke. ;_) i think it rather heartening that buzzards like each other so much they congregate morning and night together, and often seem to me to be having flying contests. They serve a very unglamorous but needed purpose, too. This was one of those poems where you start in one place and end in another, so I thought the candle of survival needed to burn at both ends, as it were.
DeleteWOW! Believe it or not, we were in No. California last week and saw a bunch of turkey buzzards, along with various other birds. The vultures and such, so important to the ecology.... your phrase "violin eyes" struck me.
ReplyDeleteThere was so much magic, mythology, and mystery in this work. Really, one of your best, Hedge. Peace, Amy
http://sharplittlepencil.com/2012/11/09/the-sweetest-presence/
I enjoyed reading what others had to say about this stunning poem. As Hannah says, it has a magical folklore, native american feel with "distinct hedgewitch strands" You delve into older, below the bone territory with: of skin shifters walking/ where the waking's hard/but the sleeping is harder... which begs incarnation. wonderful.
ReplyDeleteBeautifully put together, it was a treat to read. I loved your use of anaphora.
ReplyDeleteHow do you write like this without becoming famous? I just don't get it. This poem is so powerful, Joy, and my mind flashed to a giant tree at Frenchglen, Oregon, in the Steens Mountain Wilderness. It is the only place I've seen Turkey Vultures and I saw them at dusk by the hundreds on that huge tree. I guess they roosted there for the night, then hunted the fields come dawn. They were unforgettable.
ReplyDeleteWonderful lines and beautifully written, Joy. Hope you have a great weekend.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeletehey hedge,
i get such a strong sense of place: the one you create (poetic) , but physical also . . . i find your work comforting and never more so than here
Bonedancer, fly
in the dream I dream
of the totem wolf talking
of skinshifters walking
where the waking's hard
but the sleeping is harder
on memory's cold stones,
loser's bloat and bones
this stanza is so good for so many reasons,
but if i were to eye glide over the target words
i could be fooled into thinking it is an overfamiliar
prospect . . .
but you make those words fresh in context
and take ownership of them, making them yeild to
your plan and they DO sing of something living
alive and active!
THIS!
chuffling
your chicks towards a white sun
candle that burns in the grass.
i inhale the power of words, measured . . .
the subject is so rich and you tap it,
channel it and make it solid enough to experience
at THE level of PO metaphysics! (a place i like to hang out
and, y'know - chillax (in an intense fashion:)
Yeah--I struggled with the two rhyme lines--they have a kind of auto-written sentimentality in them--using the vulture image helped there,maybe. You do this yourself I think--and far more ambitiously than I--denude sentimentality from basic emotion by using stark and sometimes ugly, sometimes just crazy context. I learn at your feet, grasshopper.
DeleteI really appreciate your insights, Arron--thanks for casting your beady vulture eye upon the verbal bloat.
Such beauty in this...spiritual connection to the totem. I have watched the buzzards fly and swoop wondering what death they will pillage.
ReplyDeleteClever fusion of different myths to capture what is observed
ReplyDeleteah persephone, how she struggles and we struggle to capture her. oy that was a horrible comment, but you know, she intoxicates. and even while drunk you manage to write this:
ReplyDelete"the look
that shakes a threshing
from a sowing"
wow.
Thanks, Marian. That was actually my favorite line in this one--but drunk? Do you know something I don't? I thought I was as usual stone cold sober, gnashing my teeth while writing this. ;-)
Delete