Starling

Cherry

By onemorething

Mon, 30 Mar 2020
  • 2315 reads
10 comments
 

I think you are like Anne Boleyn;

you scold a black glance from a Rowan branch,

you guard its buds as they rupture new life

as if they were emergent insects from cocoons.

You whistle and shreep your tuneless noise,

but your feathers are an iridescence of speckles

that flirt in green and purple.

I watch you pluck a spider 

as it descends from a thread

as if it was a meal brought to your high table,

and with its dark exoskeleton clasped

in the firmness of your golden beak,

I admire your cold determination for the fodder

to deliver to your hatched blue gems

when survival is the only form of seduction.

You will roost and rejoin your flock,

to roll again under clouds moulded 

from forgotten gods, where a multitude may merge

as one rise and swell of smoke,

and hidden in your memory - the shadow of a hawk.

 

Image from wikimedia commons:

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:

 

Certificate U
Poem
Unclassified

Comments

Submitted by drew_gummerson on

It's a great first line. Because everything builds and develops from there. 

 

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

oh yes - exactly what Drew says!

 

Submitted by onemorething on

Thanks both! And for the cherries which come to think of it would be nice at a Tudor banquet, however, I'm sure I read somewhere once that fruit wasn't good for starlings. Leave the cherries there though please.  :)

Correction: they can have cherries and berries which makes sense as they're birds (!), but general fruit gives them more trouble, too much sucrose for them for them to metabolise, it gives them heartburn perhaps. 

 

Submitted by Di_Hard on

I love startlings, you have captured them perfectly!

"an iridescence of speckles

that flirt in green and purple."

"a multitude may merge

as one rise and swell of smoke,

and hidden in your memory - the shadow of a hawk."

I love the detail of the spider catching too.

Are you an artist? I was thinking this afternoon, your poems are all so visual, line by line I can see them

 

 

 

Submitted by onemorething on

Yes, they are such beauties aren't they. Thank you for your lovely comment, I love art, but am no artist, I am glad they are visual to you, they are very visual in my head when I write them, but that's as far as it goes. I imagine if you handed a chimp a paintbrush it would produce more impressive daubs than me, sadly. Thank you for reading it, Di. x 

 

Submitted by Di_Hard on

Well, if anything gets me making pictures again it is going to be your writing. You are an amazing communicator

 

Submitted by onemorething on

Oh that's such a compliment! I take it you're an artist then, Di? I would love to see your art, I can imagine how wonderful it is based on your writing. 

 

Submitted by Di_Hard on

 have not done any for decades. These last few weeks, I couldn't write and I almost thought I might. But your poems, I see them as clearly in my mind as when I used to do my own stuff. I am not sure I can anymore, my hands are too stiff. I will just enjoy seeing your poems :0)

 

Submitted by luigi_pagano on

A clever and bold opening line to a poem which weaves beautiful imagery into lyrical verse. The analogy, unless I am much mistaken, may have been inspired by Hans Holbein's painting “A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling” which some people now believe to be that of Anne Lovell and not Anne Boleyn. Regardless of the connection, the depiction of the bird's behaviour is fascinating and very realistic . As usual a read worth of admiration.

Warm regards, Luigi x

 

Submitted by onemorething on

Thank you Luigi! Actually, it wasn't, at least not consciously as oddly enough I did look at that painting when I wrote my little batch of ekphrastic poems, I love that painting, and the Tudors / Elizabethan /Stuart periods of history are probably the ones I know best. But perhaps unconsciously, but mainly I always think of the Tudors when I see starlings in pictures as you can see their lovely colouring then. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Rachel x