“Bird species are disappearing at a scarcely conceivable rate.”
(‘Muscicapa Striata: The Spotted Flycatcher’)
Each spring as you stack up they journey north,
re-lay that nest in your old garden wall.
You catch them at their ease, such elegance;
ash brown above a creamy dappled breast.
They dart and twist, snap insects on the wing,
turn deftly back to where they started from.
Eggs warm to touch, as sheer as porcelain;
flecked shades of gilded bronze, the Midas brush.
Each year they leave, conceive strange distances,
exotic latitudes you’ve never seen.
You’ve flown and your old habitat’s turned down,
six houses scheme. No summer guests these days.
That’s progress, you concede, fast in the fourth
dimension where your travellers still breed.
Peter Branson, UK
Thursday 26 May 2011
Friday 20 May 2011
Tree Dream by David Chorlton
In the dream all that remained where the tree had stood
was a stump that marked
its former place at the incline
on which a trail curved back as it climbed
through white stones and grass
from the streambed to the deserted mine
and up into the stars. In the dream
some friends who had never seen the tree
when its roots ran deep into the earth
came to the spot on the occasion
of a loss so great they knew nobody would recover
the boughs reaching high
through all the seasons and thousands of leaves
opening and turning in the forest
as they had fallen and opened
for longer than anyone has been alive.
In the dream they knelt
and raised their eyes toward the sky.
In the dream there was such grief. There was
operatic weeping. There was
black, black mourning. In the dream
it was only one tree.
David Chorlton, Arizona, USA
was a stump that marked
its former place at the incline
on which a trail curved back as it climbed
through white stones and grass
from the streambed to the deserted mine
and up into the stars. In the dream
some friends who had never seen the tree
when its roots ran deep into the earth
came to the spot on the occasion
of a loss so great they knew nobody would recover
the boughs reaching high
through all the seasons and thousands of leaves
opening and turning in the forest
as they had fallen and opened
for longer than anyone has been alive.
In the dream they knelt
and raised their eyes toward the sky.
In the dream there was such grief. There was
operatic weeping. There was
black, black mourning. In the dream
it was only one tree.
David Chorlton, Arizona, USA
Monday 16 May 2011
Of Warbler and Quail by Rae Spencer
Drab little she in the brush
Muttering her song to lure
Someone else
But only I respond
Drawn across the dune
To listen closer
As a child I spoke to quail
I whistled out their bobwhite name
To hear them shriek it back
But this little warbler
Outside my beachfront door
Her accent slips my ear
Measures of water wisdom
Refrains of woven nest
Codas that fall silent
Because I have come too near
To understanding
What is lovely on this shore
Of daily tide
Of sandy soil and storms
Of quickening flocks
That speak their sea-swept names
In secret tangled tongues
Of salty sail and oar
And then they fly away
While I struggle, yearn to say
What I remember of briars
Of dry summer streams
And winter dreams
Of silent quail
Hungry among the thistle
Of home, my distant valley home
So many years from here
Rae Spencer
Muttering her song to lure
Someone else
But only I respond
Drawn across the dune
To listen closer
As a child I spoke to quail
I whistled out their bobwhite name
To hear them shriek it back
But this little warbler
Outside my beachfront door
Her accent slips my ear
Measures of water wisdom
Refrains of woven nest
Codas that fall silent
Because I have come too near
To understanding
What is lovely on this shore
Of daily tide
Of sandy soil and storms
Of quickening flocks
That speak their sea-swept names
In secret tangled tongues
Of salty sail and oar
And then they fly away
While I struggle, yearn to say
What I remember of briars
Of dry summer streams
And winter dreams
Of silent quail
Hungry among the thistle
Of home, my distant valley home
So many years from here
Rae Spencer
Friday 6 May 2011
In Memoriam by Nadya Avila Chant
You are text and subtext, my sound and my caesura,
The verdant meadows of adolescent summers,
And the fallow fields of a dreamless winter.
You are sigh and gasp and bated breath and I
Your restless child and somnolent woman.
You keep a home in the curve of my earlobe,
In the scar on my wrist, in the white of my fingernails.
Nadya Avila Chant, Utah, USA
The verdant meadows of adolescent summers,
And the fallow fields of a dreamless winter.
You are sigh and gasp and bated breath and I
Your restless child and somnolent woman.
You keep a home in the curve of my earlobe,
In the scar on my wrist, in the white of my fingernails.
Nadya Avila Chant, Utah, USA
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