Gifting Of The Birds

 

 

 

 

 Gifting Of The Birds

They say a princess

will have the Fae come to her birth

to make her fate with augury for gifts,

but the peasant dreams in birds

 rainbowed as the sky, as sleek as night,

gathered round her cradle

with a liquid blackbird murmur

with two tumbling raven feathers

with six scarlet cardinal sins,

swarming seven snowy days

with all their gifts and curses, not sure

which to give her, some of this and some of that,

sum of love and losing, morning song

or evening silence, heart of grace,

tongue of willow, green mossflower, desert spine,

 

hard horse apples or sweet blood-oranges

of November moon, all or none of these

before they fly, on to the next accouchement. 

Still from time to time she sees them perching,

come back to check their work

cocking tiny heads aslant,

looking but not telling, never saying

more than a bird might say

about the time that's coming

when all gifts will be opened,

all the curses told.

What will you do at last, 

their bright eyes seem to wink,

with what we gave you,

before you can do no more?

 

 

 

 April 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for 

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Birds of Paradise, © Vincente Manansala  Fair Use

Bird in Spectacles, author unknown, via Sunday Muse   Fair Use

 

The Myrðaling

 

The Myrðaling
A Ghost Story

Cold across the portal

through the shadow of the veil

the child shivers at me

wild-walking the mirk.

She's thin as she'd never been

when she lay as she was left,
tiny feet kicking in a stiff skin wrap,
taller too than when her kicking stopped

alone in the bramble where the light broke

as the snow wound blue

around her like smoke.

Now she can walk miles

through the night from the black

back corners of the winter before

and after all things
for she's passed the rock door.

On the slaughtering shadow

that splits the soft loam

she blows like a seed that won't be sown

but must be milled on
the stone of years

with a river of bones.

She opens her mouth

and sings like the plague

for a name of her own

to give her a grave.

Take mine I say--it's all I have

for a night sister here in the dying year,
where we've gone too far

to turn around, where too soon
we eat the bread of the dead,
where spirit can weigh
as heavy as flesh when the veil falls away.

Then the moon-girl came out of her lost disguise;

I saw my twin smile, and close her eyes.

~October 2014

reposted October 2021 for Spooktacular Weekend

at earthweal Open Link

Process notes: In Scandanavian folklore, a myrðaling, (from Old Norse, 'myrða,' murder) or more properly, myling, was the ghost of a child killed by its mother in infancy, usually  the child of an unmarried woman, or of a poor family unable to provide for it, abandoned in some unfrequented place and forced to walk the earth seeking burial. The myling might appear and reveal the acts of its killer in a song, or call out for a name, when the hearer could save the spirit by saying "take mine' so that it might then rest in consecrated ground, (as in this poem) or it might vengefully possess the living, jumping on their backs and forcing the victim to carry them to a graveyard, growing heavier with each step. You can read more in this wikipedia article.

Image: The Strawberry Girl, 1777, by Joshua Reynolds

Public domain via wikiart.org

I have manipulated this image.

The Spider Captain

The Spider Captain

An old stuffed dog

and a long legged spider

a bed like a boat

and a web in the corner

a neon nightlight

from the downstairs sign

stiff faded curtains with red designs

to cover the moon;

too many children, not enough rooms.

A place on the couch

that hides a bed

a long legged spider

to cover your head

to rock you to sleep

while the bed-boat sails where

there's a whole new place

you didn't know was there

with 

a purple bracelet and knots in your hair

for Mother to comb out

and make you cry.

On his way to work,

the spider kisses her goodbye.

~February 2017

Looking beyond the obvious

for Fireblossom Friday

at real toads

Image: The Big Spider's Diamonds,  by Edmond Dulac

Fair use via wikiart.org

22,000 Square Miles

22,000 Square Miles

The lake and I had

an understanding; I gave her

seeds and roots, the stranded dead, rocks,

and the things that are broken by rocks

and she would dissolve me

off that poisoned shore, re-

place me, suspend me, teach

the words

to her lullaby waves, croon-

curled by a mother's hand,
each replicant stroked singular
from the fleeing horizon,

forever a promise.
I had her mutable

possessing sky

wind for a towel, a piano,

a  thick book of tales

written in lettering twisted invisible,

drawing the silence of dusk and dawn,

star, sun and moon

so I would know its name.

There where wet air 

whisked whispering to peaks

white as cream--beaten, soft

yet standing, standing--

where light and shadow painted

their example,

though I was not water, to live with her

ninety-nine years, though I could not 

foam twenty-two thousand miles,

I had my time of knowing

what to do.

I learned all my imperatives

and then I flew.

~April 2015

posted for   real toads

Challenge: What Sparked Your Poetic Heart
The buoyant and gifted Magaly Guerrero asks us to tell of a poet or work of art that set us on our poetic road--I have written that poem already a few times ( Caryatid, The Farewell Book) so I chose to show another departure point, how finding the power of something not made by man influenced me, and in fact, saved me.

Process notes: Lake Michigan has a surface area of approximately 22,300  square miles . The residence time of its water, ie mean time the water spends in any particular lake, is 99 years. For more information on the lake I grew up with, see wikipedia

Photo: Lake Michigan -Waves Off Zion, by Andrea Jaeger Miehls, Source

Moonchild

Moonchild

In the moon and in the night

and in my secrets I was born.

Not in the morning rain, the blasting grey,

not  in the deadspace between the end of wars

and Endless War.

No, it was night, eternal night

tropical, of silent birds and gathering grasses,

that haloed round my denim figured cradle.

There I first heard the fireflies

scratching at the door,

there watched your fingers quicken

as ligaments of iguanas clack their claws

skittering cross a maze of key-coloured stones,

coaxing out the asymmetric dance--there,

when the moon was a melting blob

discarded from the candle-batch,

sinking as extravagant dawn

laughed another vow she couldn't keep,

lipsticked and wrapped
in purple-orange chemise,

undressed soon enough to naked slate

as night completes

its locust-rasp of snow and cloud

made insect brief.

Inside, the fire crackles a millennium after,

like fingers walking over a

brittle rustle of paper faces, quick-

covered by the mirror before another's 

wick-lit eye can truly see

who it is that holds them thrall

in shine and flicker, 

above a winter moon handmade to fall.

~February 2015 

posted for    real toads

Challenge: Kumulipo

"The "Kumulipo" is an old Hawaiian prayer chant that poetically describes the creation of the world. The word literally means "beginning-in-deep-darkness." Here darkness doesn't connote gloom and evil. Rather, it's about the inscrutability of the embryonic state; the obscure chaos that reigns before germination." 

Image: the Snake Charmer, 1907, by Henri Rousseau

Public Domain via wikiart.org 

Pardon me for re-using this favorite image, but it was the one in my mind when this poem came through.

The Myrðaling

The Myrðaling
A Ghost Story

Cold across the portal

through the shadow of the veil

the child shivers at me

wild-walking the mirk.

She's thin as she'd never been

when she lay as she was left,
tiny feet kicking in a stiff skin wrap,
taller too than when her kicking stopped

alone in the bramble where the light broke

as the snow wound blue

around her like smoke.

Now she can walk miles

through the night from the black

back corners of the winter before

and after all things
for she's passed the rock door;

on the slaughtering shadow

that splits the soft loam

she blows like a seed that won't be sown

but must be milled instead
on the stone of years

with a river of bones.

She opens her mouth

and sings like the plague

for a name of her own

to give her a grave.

Take mine I say--it's all I have

for a night sister here in the dying year,
where we've gone too far

to turn around, where too soon
we eat the bread of the dead,
where spirit can weigh
as heavy as flesh when the veil falls away.

Then the moon-twin came out of her lost disguise;

I saw the child smile, and close her eyes.

~October 2014

posted for    real toads

Challenge: Get Listed with Grapeling
Grapeling (It Could Be That) hosts a very seasonal prompt, and asks us to include at least three words from a sinister list he has provided to tell a campfire-worthy ghost story. For the list, follow the link to real toads above.

Process notes: In Scandanavian folklore, a myrðaling, (from Old Norse, 'myrða,' murder) or more properly, myling, was the ghost of a child killed by its mother in infancy, usually  the child of an unmarried woman, or of a poor family unable to provide for it, abandoned in some unfrequented place and forced to walk the earth seeking burial. The myling might appear and reveal the acts of its killer in a song, or call out for a name, when the hearer could save the spirit by saying "take mine' so that it might then rest in consecrated ground, (as in this poem) or it might vengefully possess the living, jumping on their backs and forcing the victim to carry them to a graveyard, growing heavier with each step. You can read more in this wikipedia article.

Image: The Strawberry Girl, 1777, by Joshua Reynolds

Public domain via wikiart.org

I have manipulated this image.