Crow Call

 

 

 

 

Crow Call

(a 55)

 

We always wear black

the crows and I,

call our skies

with a half-born crack,

shadow nests where our treasures lie,

 eat skeleton suppers with glass-star eyes.

 

Never look back.

Never look back

 

at bones we've picked

bleaching dry,

at red we've beaked

with black tails high,

dead in the darkwood

with summer's sigh.

June 2022

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poet's Pub

Open Link

Images: Satellite 2014 ©Bryan Holland, via internet, Fair Use

Antlers, author unknown, via internet, Fair Use

 

Green Summer Country

 

 

 

 

 

 

Green Summer Country

 

 

"The sea turned to plain land, the snow on the mountain disappeared. In my eyes thousands of years fade like dust yet my heart is as before...I thought I had forgotten, but I remember everything" ~unknown, from the Mandarin

 

 I walk there in dreams,

the old summer country,

nave of a worship

where ice dies to green fire,

where we tended the world tree

whose roots wrap around

the well of the word;

where we bound the Great Wolf

with the trust of a god

made one-handed,

in the time when the mistletoe

was too young to swear oaths.

I walk there now, with

snow spirits warmed

in green shadow,

where the deer

sigh and surrender

to the arrow and its prayer,

where the Great Serpent gentled

belts the water around the wide land,

waves married to shore.

 

Where to eat is to be blessed

to love is to be whole

to suffer is to gain wisdom,

where bees make our wine,

where every leaf

hides the saga of a king.

My feet

wander lost, my throat blisters

when I wake to the Serpent unloosed,

the sea spoiled and untied,

the Wolf's bite tearing the snow 

from the mountains. My eyes

hold the dust of a thousand years

yet my heart

is the same.

I thought I had forgotten this;

I've forgotten nothing.

June 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for earthweal's

Dreaming In Green hosted by Sherry Marr

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes: The poem references figures from Norse mythology; Ygdrasil, Fenris,Jormungandr,Tyr, the story of Baldur. The transcribed quote at the header I heard last night while watching a serialized Chinese television drama.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Glenn, 1936, ©Maxfield Parrish  Public Domain

Jormangand, the World Serpent © Aleski Briclot  via internet Fair Use

 

Breaking The Stone

 

 

 

Breaking The Stone

 

 

When I left the forest for a wilderness

of pillars, hexed by a tinsel covenant,

the moon cried for me. Pines sparked with

white gems of her longing. Minerva's owl

called my name three times; still

I chose the thrown shadows of a fire

that burned just out of my sight.

 

Sixteen years I followed shadows,

ate them, dressed in them, became

what was cast in front of me instead of

its birthing light. Stone I owned held no fire,

only chill when my foot left its face.The

pulling promise that scorched my hand

never could be grasped.

At last like a widow's first laugh,

there came the reaping breath of what is,

carousing down columns to lift

my short hairs with the brush

of owl's wings above me,

spread wide to carry me home.

Then the orphan moon

put away her tears

and blazed in the lavender sky.

Pine-wind recited in the meter of stars,

and I was their matchstick,

Gaia's fuse for a flameless firework

filling the amaranthine wood

against the dark end.

 

In my hand

I took the gift-feather

from the owl that called my name

and with it, wand and talisman,

without any heat at all,

I broke the stone.

 

June 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a draft poem for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: This poem could use some additional work, but I am posting it in its infant form til I can find what else it needs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Owl and Pillars, author unknown, via Sunday Muse Fair Use  Image source 

Owl and Moon, ©Alan Perry, via internet Fair Use