Roosting

dawn blue morning light
after thanksgiving frost
solitude & ghosts
playfully toy with my ritual
a sparrow jumps from pussy-willow
to barbed wire
then off again
the cats are in the house
it is just me and the eerie past
that the thanksgiving mornings after remind me
of late night rendezvous
when friends as lovers mixed
in mornings such as these
as guilt freed sleep recalls
those impetus desires
or the fruits they may have bore

these are memories that are
playfully youthful
opaque & damaging as the ill maintenanced
mechanics diving into space
a mathematical oopsee-daisy
filled with unintended consequence
that sophomore instincts
overlooked in oversight
on that banner what should be scrolled
when love is not mischief nor is it demanding
but a yawp
I would justify it in this way
that sometimes
people misjudge me
as some-one-else
as I did too those mornings?

I know, for my part that is untrue
for I bargained for what I knew to be veracity
secrets rest as charnel
they are the tiny plants of romance
that filter idle reverie
those lovers may regret me in their tales
to their sisters and mothers or daughters
they would return to their crime in
automobiles and call of
unrequited love lost
if I were to apologize for being insincere
I would be a liar
for sometimes love can be a time & a place
an hour or weeks; we search only
for forever and in an honest pairing
I know love to be forever

I am testimony to that hallmark prayer
I have written and rewritten those sonnets
in joy & dismay too; and replaced folly
with reality while suffering my sins
where illumination bended my psyche
we dance with semblance to lesson
our matrixes & legacies
in these wee hours we remain as we once were
like lightning in a bottle or oily rags behind
a barn door
I am reminded of nature – now – as I write
a hawk flew low through the corridor to sweep
up some game as all the sparrows scattered
the hawk flew back empty talons to recalculate
as I recall years ago I buried a hawk that I found
had broken its neck

life as a predator has seminal rewards
lonely, starving in the cold November morning
it is all as simple as that
for I watch that hawk now leave the hemlock
to search the plowed soybean field
our traceable steps vanish
our temporary disguise reaches out
to another garnish
what is sought becomes a reflection
with or without our talisman we
reach empty or retrieve our goals
where in the morning to have our meal or wait
so do we rest or journey onwards
march with our instincts & resort
find forgiveness for ourselves
or banish into the countryside to mend our wounded-ness

I am much too sure of my desires for recrimination
and have been too hunted for redesign
the elements never change
only the availability of choices
mark each epoch as a line in the sand
and wait for the next wave
spirit is a manifest
an issuing bond of creation and void
as we return again & again
with soliloquy and cherished guardians
I have long felt my ancestors in my bones
in my presence, in my autonomy,
my pleasure & in my pain
as the ingénues and the whores
recoil and requite my sardonic
hegemony in topography & gravity

it is not all passive gesture as we
conclude our expressions; is it
even scorn has a reservoir to appeal to
we ride our reigns to full gallop for
one reason or another to achieve destination
as we are want to rest
for always we are mutable
in our minds
and our ingenuity
it is when we are not resourceful that
we become captured by our goals;
to be led & clasped, unlucky & spent
no longer reaching for the sky
and into our covet-ness
flailing about in our culture
incendiary


© 2008 woundedlordliterature
ШАМРО
November 28, 2008



“There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads –“

Hawks Roosting
-Ted Hughes