A Crown of Sonnets for World Poetry Day 2014

I've been so busy distributing brochures for the Bristol Spring Poetry Festival next month - have I mentioned that before, the Spring Festival? - that I missed until now the fact that it's World Poetry Day.  Never mind, here is a Feather Crown.

Seven Feathers

Lucifer

Scattering sparks, glints of glass,

it scalpels down through solid light,

freeing lethal, sharp-edged feathers

of every colour that is black –

crackle of witchery, guilt-edged

misery, thunder, mussel shells, the cavern

that is absence

Watcher, jagged scavenger, dark harbinger,

the idea of raven

arranging pieces into claw, beak, sinew, eye

fused to horizon,

melting from the blazing sun,

emerging glossed, wing feathers

fingering bright air

Magger

Wing feathers fingering air, a quick

flickering in woods

Black or white, day or night,

it’s not that simple

Somewhere a river’s running backwards,

pebbles, stones are treading water,

flowers open on the coldest day of winter

 

so don’t spit rituals, mutter rhymes 

to make me safe, unwind bad luck 

Don’t read meaning into chance configuration

I don’t take jewels, the fairsies’ gold

I whet the silver’s sickle edge,

the half light of the half dark moon,

a stealing shadow

Chaw

Steely shadows, colour of doubt,

pinned to the ridge tiles of the house

by silver eyes that do not blink

What makes you think, this time,

things will be any different?

Your feathers rags, your ageing bones

too thin, too frail to hold you high,

lift you clear

yet still they launch themselves on air,

urgent pairs of clattering jackdaws,

skilled practitioners of chance

and how to take it

their chackles words of love

hurled against the dusk

Rooky Wood

Hurled against dusk,

    the big bang. Oh, it starts quietly enough –

            handfuls of rooks, cartwheeling stars,

                        shining a path, beating the drum

              of coming night

     

              this strident tide of dark matter,

     haphazard galaxies

caught in its rip,

                  conjured from nothing

                       a black-tailed comet of raucous calling

                           a falling

                  down through failing light

          pulled by the wood, its need

                           to leaf the bare-boned trees

Scritch

Leave these trees, night-watch rooks,

pack your black suitcases and go

sling your hook!  Bare branches need us.

We jays are ornament enough,

dressed in daybreak’s

rosy cloud, cerulean blue,

more celestial than the leaves

that startle grass

Treetop Puccinis,

we copy winter’s frosty opera –  

banshee gales, sexed-up foxes,

wind on stone

If you rooks will not be told,

we’ll sing you gone

Murder

Everyone wants them gone

WE TAKE AN ANNUAL, SUSTAINABLE CROP

somebody said they wire them up

let’s face it, they’re nasty

FROM THE CARRION CROW POPULATION

and it’s their screaming

they’ll eat anything, even road kill

TO ENHANCE THE CROP OF GAME

that keeps the other crows away and

they’ll peck anything, attack anything

WE CAN SHOOT DURING WINTER

they’re left to hang till they’re

dead black wings

sails spread against mourning

Palores

Sails spread against morning,

chancing the breaking spray of light,

a couple of choughs, pioneer lovers

seeking haven, their new court,

dreams of a dormant people

feathering their shoulders

The old ones knew the truth

A man with no tongue

will lose his land

so map our granite, tells its edges,

jig these clifftops

in your scarlet dancing boots,

lit firesticks blazing in your beaks,

scattering sparks

'Seven Feathers' will be published in the poetry magazine Sarasvati anon.