Lion And Ravens With Unsettled Sun

 

 

 

 

 

 "..It is a wheel, the rays /around the sun. The wheel survives the myths/The fire eye in the clouds survives the gods.."

~Wallace Stevens

 

~  *  ~

 

Lion and Ravens With Unsettled Sun

 

Two ravens circling in a spotless sky

on a warning wind with fire on its breath

soft but dangerous as a lion's hiss,

in dead grass gathered to burn a phantom's past

that now in turn burns us.

A feast of the senses is just

another place to die among strangers

hearing the hiss of lions trapped

in a body devouring itself

in camera, the dark heart.

Best to fall to the sudden sharp sword

of the god's divine panic, danced to dust

under his dusky foot, his pipes hissing like a lion,

a screech and flutter of ravens at the window.

Light is sliced to crescents dazzling at the edge;

nothing but the sun survives the myths.

The lion has no wheel behind his hiss.

Ravens flow in the tempest and its drum,

dark lettering spelling out the ride to come.

November 2022

 

 

posted for

Word Garden Word List

 

 

and

 

 

 

earthweal's

Open Link Weekend # 142

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: The Word List this week is taken from the works of Jim Morrison. He has always reminded me of a lion in figure and impact, though perhaps a bit more prone to roar than hiss. I've been reading Stevens again lately and somehow he got tangled up here, with more of a sun king's than lizard king's flare.

 

 

 

[lyrics begin at 1:12 mins]

 

 

 

Images: Lion, 1492, by Albrecht Durer   Public Domain

Samhain Night 2014, ©joyannjones

 

Song Of The Weavers

 

Song Of The Weavers

 

 

 

 

The Norns speak all they know

in pleaching and binding, in winding

on the spindle green thread from the Northlights,

white wool from the southern sugarmoon

as it sets in blood-orange dustfall.

 

Their rhythm curls out from

the tangleroot nest under the world tree

where they refresh the well

season to season, age to age, and all that was

and is to be is formed in their throats' call.

 

They have grown each feather

on the black raven's backs 

of thought and memory

and taken the Allfather's eye

for their balladry.

 

A hard hand makes a rock-hard life,

but their cloud-boned fingers can weave

hard lives into blooms made to jump up in sheaves

as velvet as rabbits, full-hearted sweet

as the last peach on the summertree.

 

They fire the wicker man's burn

and rain his ash into the fields

to weep for the rye

they will color again

in May's breath-dancing fly.

 

I only sit under the cooling stars

in the holiness of night with the 

owls' down floating, in the bright foundry of day

with the tongues of grass leaning

into the singing of their wild living cry.

 

 

 

 

March 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for earthweal's

Wild Language

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Three Norns, 1911, © Arthur Rackham    Public Domain

Northern Lights Over Iceland, author unknown, via internet  Fair Use

Crows In The Snow

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crows In The Snow

 

 

In the cold, in the silenced sun,

the eye reaches out

against the blind blizzard

for the heart of the rose.

 

In the fall of a dark feather

petals unfold

shed stark on the snow

in a blackness of crows.

 

Everything glittering

 comes to their eyes

as a clamor that heals;

gold light on the ice,

 

 

black feathers for blood ink,

 rosebuds from their beaks--

all dropped at my feet,

these bones in disguise.

March 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for earthweal's

Animal Poetry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Living antlers, artist unknown, via internet     Fair Use

Raven Steals The Sun, © Aaron Purcell     Fair Use

Night Scene

Night Scene

Night came and gave day

the color of water;

mothwing grey, contrarian light

reversing the mirror,

drowning sight

in sky fragments;

dropped ravens falling

or shadow's pollen.

Boughs smudged black

shake down clarity

 small as a pea, rarely seen

as  the pleasure

that comes without pain.

Night picks its soft measure

through blue rain

to me.

~May 2014

55 shadows of night for the ghost of the g-man and

 real toads

Weekend Mini-Challenge: Flash Fiction 55

The Imaginary Garden now hosts G-Man's former Friday 55 on the first weekend of every month. Yes, that would be this one. I'm stepping in for Mama Zen today as host, so please come join us with a 55 of your own.

Photo: Darkwood, copyright joyannjones, 2011-2014

Crows

Crows

The  crows come down

from their high spy tower,

a gypsy synchronicity of black

but they tell me nothing

any more, beaks macerating silence,

eyes shiny blank as linoleum;

no answers, only sharp corvine curses,

cracks as they pry the suet butterfly

from her metal corset

and convene in iron symmetry

a privacy of devouring.

It's plain that I'm not Odin

though I've given more than my eye,

that the gossip of the green world

passes me by, the old feed of

voices an ejaculation of clouds,

alabaster riddles in indigo night

while I dream white dreams

in the periwinkles,

forgotten as Sleipnir's name

wondering if ragnarök

is still to come, or already

gathered up in the trees.

~December 2012

 Optional Musical Accompaniment

Posted for   real toads

Challenge:An Ink-Stained Wordlist

I had a lot of help with this one, first from Kerry's list of favorite toad words at the link above, then from the speaking photography of my friend Petteri Sulonen, whose picture, Crow Taking Flight with Frozen Treetops is at the header. 

Process notes: In Norse mythology, Odin possessed two ravens, Huginn and Muninn(Thought and Memory) who flew the world and brought him back its news. He also had a magical eight-legged horse named Sleipnir whom he rode between the worlds. Odin gave his eye under the world tree to learn the wisdom of the Frost Giants. You can click the tags 'odin' or 'Huginn and Mugin' below for more poems about these symbols.

Thanks, as always, Petteri, for the inspiration.

Raven and Stone

Raven and Stone

The raven holds

a found brightness in his claw

that his sharp beak

will never crack

yet he eyes it with

the very speaking soul

of possession,

one hunger set aside

while another feeds.

Winter with her cueball eyes

stares me down, professionally

grinding me grey, brushing me blue;

send me something green, love

something round and alive

to put in my raven’s claw,

not this old riddle

worn in my hair

that I will never crack

the petrified chrysalis
of a dead butterfly, the
forgotten classified secrets  

of two paper forms loving in code;
undelivered, undeciphered

folded apart in an alien cryptogram,

too afraid of ripping

to yield and make

one perfect origami.

January 2012

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

Odin's day Night

Odin’s day Night

I wrap a poor turn 

of grizzled hope

around the moon

so frayed

I wrap it in the too 
opulent velvet 
of a voice

so dark

singing the

old

sagas of inamoratas

journeys' endings

baldur's fall

monks' canted fragments

figments of

gods and demons

queens and fools

past and future

love and death

The night sky is freckled

with perseid’s white splash,

droplets of star burning

strained through the alembic

of a staring nullity

defining my preterition,

sizzling like the rasp

of some old god’s laugh

rough from a silence

passing paleology.

How their light runs

fleet suns of Perseus

skittering across

night’s spread table

a howl on the ripped nail

of moon splintering

on Odin’s day

night is remote

as the face behind 

a blue electric vow, 

close as

the corvine quark

tumbling sable japes.

That laughter in the air, 

yelling from the beaks of crows   

falls high above 

beyond the circling light;

how the void must ring with it

time out of mind

IN PERPETUUM.

August 2011