The Feral Baby

 

 

 

 

The Feral Baby

 

 

In the dark 

before breakfast I dreamed

that the baby fell on its head. It wasn't

my fault. It just climbed up my shoulder

and jumped. I only borrowed it

because you made me. It wasn't mine.

I am not one for babies.

Nevertheless,

it cried, so I put it in my purse

for the gypsy. She offered to give it a casserole.

  (Or was that use it in a casserole?) I said,

"It doesn't like my purse, but it wouldn't like a

casserole any better." I'm not one for babies,

but I know that much.

 

Finally 

I took it back to you 

at the urban university lab. You put

 a ribbon on it, called it Jean, kissed it.

 It was fine then. I was tempted to

sneak it back to its mother, but

you'd turned her into a starling.

 

And that's how

she came to be my child. 

I'm not one for babies

until they learn how

to fly.

 

 

 

 January 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for 

Shay's Word List #9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: No babies were harmed in the production of this poem.

 

 

 

 

Images: Creeping baby doll, 1871   Public Domain

Starling Murmuration © Menno Shaefer    Fair Use

Cabin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Cabin

 

 

 

The war was lost, the way

worse. I felt

the tired mare sigh

a heart-green path to

my old lover, the oldest lost

 and brown-eyed truth,

 a place to fold us

peel to apple,

bird to song.

 

I rearranged his

forest home as if

it were mine

 

and so it was

the old mare sighed.

 

 

 

 November 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for dVerse Poets

Open Link

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This poem has been edited since first posted.

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Illustration for "Vasilisa the Beautiful." 1900,  © Ivan Bilibin  Public Domain

Peasant Girl Near A Cabin, 1895, © Camille Corot   Public Domain

 

 

Lightning Tree

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Lightning Tree

When I was a child

pewterblue eyes round

as green walnuts, yellow pigtails

pulled tight in shredded rubber bands

I breathed up a world where I

lived in the storm, thunderheads panting like

mastiffs, tongues lolled over the lake, wind

secret as the monster under the bed

smiling, lightning fairy-dancing

into a forest 

of wild branches;

I didn't blink for the peace of it

covering the screaming, the blows,

cleaning my face

 

of a toy's tears. 

I breathed it in, petrichor

and the smell of power,

a brew of walking cobwebs

that piggy-backed me away,

a broken-eyed Dorothy doll

searching for Oz.

 

When I asked you to

kiss me like rain, you took me

up high on the lightning tree.

You had a web there, gunmetal strong

and sticky with grief. On the 

edge of those sudden wires,

one foot already caught

 

you don't even know you're dead.

When you fight

to run with one eye blind, 

and feel the tremble

coming closer

 

you learn everything

you lost

 

  all

you never had

 

 and that you 

can never trust

a storm.

 

 

 

~July 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Note: Comment moderation has been turned on. Apologies for the inconvenience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Images: Lightning in West Texas © Ryan Smith Photography   Fair Use

Broken doll, via Sunday Muse   Fair Use

 

January House

January House

Fierce-As-Red-Hair and Fly-As-A-Fox

from the liminal's edge came to pick the locks

dressed in their frills

for thrills and kills

they opened the door

and live here still.

Fly-As-A-Fox and Fierce-As-Red-Hair

can spin windershins and dance on green air

with nightshade brows

and bones of mouse

they climbed the steps of

the January house.

Fly and Fierce have a skull that sings

have pleated blue smocks and onyx rings

on the balcony standing with little sharp things

that gleam by moon's eye

where you cannot pass by

unless you dance

 with Fierce and Fly.

Don't splash through the mud where the lily nods.

Don't go to a church where you don't know the gods.

There's no time to pray

and the blood has its way

when Fierce and Fly

come out to play.

June 2020

 posted for

 The Sunday Muse

 Note: The flowering plant below the girls in this picture is agapanthus, or Lily of the Nile, native to South Africa. It is not a lily, and not from the Nile tho it does like a warm climate and a moist soil.

Image: color (not colorized) photograph from 1908, author unknown, manipulated

 

Homeless Warrior

 

Homeless Warrior

Born refugee in a gypsy's flight

to mismatch love for wherever I might be:

flowers in the pavement, lakes behind brick,

gnomes at a cotillion, cobalt sea spilling

in dunes at the sun's yellow forge

til my heart was rolled flat

to cut out round moons

with a steelsilver punch

so light passes through me

without shadow or reflection.

If tears fall, it's a petaldrop

of old flowers passing, of dust devils, gliding

unimpeded and small through

the moon-shaped holes

where the red warrior glow

of an eon's earth blood is

just a waver in that dark

where the sword falls to rust

and time takes the trowel

from the gardener's hand

whose broken her legs, her back and her heart.

The bowl wants its dust

the wind wants its wildfire

and what I might want is their last desire,

but the heat of the fight, the miles in the eye, 

the pilgrims of roses proclaim what they form--

warcries, or lovesongs still riding the storm.

February 2020

posted for earthweal's weekly challenge

Solastalgia

Images: Trafficking in Human Beings, 1894, by Joaquin Sorolla Public Doman

Joan of Arc kisses the sword of liberation, 1863, by Dante Garbriel Rossetti, Public Domain manipulated.

Down Below

Down Below

A long run last night

under the Silver Eye

Blood on my hide

but not my own.

Here I lie

where the Red Eye

cannot come, where nothing comes

but Death and the turquoise tide.

Here no sound

of song or voice, no hand, alone;

coppery tongue, asleep on bones

and no one comes.

The longhouse winks

its Yellow Eyes, cruel firelight

alive inside, so many smells

a sound like bells

I cannot make

but feel its form

like dust in my throat,

conceived but unborn.

They screamed to see me,

long tongues to greet me slipped

their sharpened iron; I broke them

then, the rafters dripped---

why shouldn't they die?

Soon someone will come.

~April 2015

a monster-waiting-for-his-hero poem, reposted for
Brendan's Hero on the Road

(originally written for National Poetry Month 2015 with Magaly Guerrero

I Hear Fictional Poets:

Create a poem written from the point of view of a fictional character.)

This poem is written in the voice of Grendel,  the 'shadow-walker,'  monster from Beowulf, 

".. an Old English epic poem..[and].. possibly the oldest surviving long poem in Old English..It was written in England some time between the 8th and the early 11th century^..."  "... Beowulf leaves [his kingdom in Sweden or Norway] to destroy Grendel, who has several times killed those asleep in the mead-hall of [the king of the Danes] after having been disturbed by the noise of the drunken revelers. After a long battle, Beowulf mortally wounds Grendel, and Grendel dies in his marsh-den..."~wikipedia

 

A favorite tale of mine, retold and filmed many many times.This is my favorite indie movie version.  

Beowulf and Grendel

Images:Untitled, by Zdislav Beksinski     Fair use

Primitive Man Seated In Shadow, by Odilon Redon    Public domain               

Friday 55 January 19 2018

Another Friday, another chance to remember and to work with the Friday 55, a meme for writers long maintained by a good man now departed, but for many of us still present in memory, Galen Hayes. Here we write for the pleasure of writing, with no rules other than that each example of prose or poetry contain 55 words, no more, no less. If you are in the mood for the exercise, link your example in the comments below, and I will be by to read and appreciate. The 55 will be alive from early Friday morning through Sunday morning. As always, comment moderation is off, but I reserve the right to apply the delete key to any passing trollish ones.

 My offering for this winter wild week in January ...

Winter Gods

Winter
tests the craven

and the brave

 limping calf, ravens' black eye-sparkle,

 days short of breath

lopped 

at the knee
by snow-padded knife.

Still
the gods hunt wild

calling where green light raids

the skyliving now.

Wolves

follow the herds 

 howling the words to
godsongs of blood,

old hungers' lore,

scenting ahead
the last home.

 ~January 2018

Optional Musical Accompaniment

"...Who shall sing me

into deathsleep sling me

when I on the path to Hel go

I sought the songs

I sent the songs

then the deepest well

gave me tears so harsh

of Death-father's  wager..."

(from Helvegen, translated)

I've written of the Wild Hunt before; if you're unfamiliar with it, there is a quick reprise of most of the myths associated with it here. 

Images :Northern Lights in Iceland, The Wild Hunt, via internet, no authors known.
Fair Use.