“bird flight” by suncana is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Reading Helen MacDonald’s essays in her book Vesper Flights inspired some of my morning poetry writing the last few weeks. Here are the poems that took flight from her words of birds, animals, nature and the world …
(inspired by High-Rise)
Above us;
insects in flight,
riding jet-streams
and wind eddies
while birds of prey,
always at the ready,
dive through night;
the sky teems
with life
(inspired by In Spight of Prisons)
Walk with me, awhile,
won’t you, and let us
wander into words …
Needless screens;
for if these diodes
of light and neon
beacons released us,
we’d see the sky,
not as pins, but as
remembered night
She doesn’t fly;
she only sings,
glitching her songs
to those who are
listening
It’s our own stories
that may yet save
us, the midnight
wanderer who recalls
lightning bugs and
glow-worms, the way
stars floating just above
this fleeting Earth
shimmered in mystery
We’re all mad,
scientists now,
pulling magic
into glass prisons,
dipping nature into tonic,
writing with wonder
of how the world
carries on, always,
even without us
”… the song continues, and the air around us is full of invisible wings.” — from Eulogy
Some things
get let go:
like falcons
at night, in
flight
like friends,
last breath, near
death
no longer mere
witness, listen:
invisible wings
flicker forgiveness
”… and then all at once, as if summoned by a call or a bell, they rise higher and higher and disappear from view.” – from Vesper Flights
Some mornings feel
like scattered words
on the wind
just sounds, we steal,
with hope a poem
might begin
to take shape, in sky,
like the fluttering flight
and soft wing
of evening swifts; we glide
through borders of unseen
so we may sing
“There would be no escaping the deep sea from the shore.” — from Dispatches from the Valley
for what are we but broken shells,
battered by waves and currents
and the moon’s luminescent glow
Safe haven may not be this beach,
not this sand, neither these dunes,
but somewhere in the ears of us
all listening, if we can, in tune to
the world
Peace (flying free),
Kevin