Category Archives: creative writing

The Sea — A Poem

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“Acadia Sea” — C.Birde, 9/20

Always…

     always,

         forever & a day,

the sea at its base

heaving

breathing

exhaling salt spray

each deep indrawn breath

released

in swell & spume against

granite slabs & stacks,

blocks & columns…

And those longstanding stones,

grooved equally with age,

call out in reply:

Yes, oh yes…

Wear away our ancient bones…

Grind down our blades & edges…

Relieve us – bit by bit by bit –

of our ponderousness…

Blunt us… Smooth us…

Spread us out beneath your

foam-laced tide…

Grant us curves unknown,

unfelt before your touch

 ‘till we emerge,

reformed.

Always streaming,

     stroking,

           singing

in ceaseless gray-green respiration,

the sea accepts all pleas,

all hopes, all griefs…

laps & soothes & polishes…

Ever willing to oblige,

always,

     always,

         forever & a day,

    the sea receives,

survives.

— C.Birde, 9/20

Golem — A Dream

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“Aster” — C.Birde, 9/20

When

earth trembles &

that mantle of unmown grass –

lush &

green &

threaded through

with a purple fringe of wild asters –

separates from the soil of its making

to heave itself up up upright

on hindquarters of loam;

When

that vaguely humanoid shape,

soft-rubbed of keen features,

lurches with thick arms raised & sifting soil

to grope with blind,

blunted,

outstretched hands

like some unfathomably old

newly born golem of earth;

and When,

in umber-and-green-and-purple tide,

the shaken sward returns abruptly

to the soft mud of its recent birth

as if it never was…

Will its voiceless,

mossy,

desperate

roar have penetrated?

or will that thrashing cry have been dismissed

as dream?

— C.Birde, 9/20

Interrupted — A Poem

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“Eastern Chipmunk” — C.Birde, 9/20

No longer

can I write here,

beneath the shaded

pergola,

blooming with the hum

of bees and the scent

of Virgin’s Bower

as that flowering vine

casts off its petals

like late summer

snow.

No.

You misunderstand.

It is, now, no less

lovely, no less

pleasant;

but the task of fitting

thoughts to words

and words together

has been usurped.

Wait…

Again,

and yet again –

interruption.

The bowl of peanuts

swiftly empties.

Restraint.

Patience.

Calm.

Fine words, indeed;

but ill-fitted to

a chipmunk’s mouth

and never ceasing

needs.

— C.Birde, 9/20

Burden — A Poem

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“Peaches” — C.Birde, 9/20

Firm as fact.

Sweet as certainty.

My knife parts velvet skin,

slices through yielding flesh

to bite the channeled stone within.

Each taste, ripe and real.

Triumph over falsehood.

Antitoxin to hate.

Each taste, a tonic to these days

of discord.

Burden me –

O please, I beg you –

burden me with the blessing

of Summer’s remaining peaches,

and I may indeed survive…

“Sliced” — C.Birde, 9/20

Shaken — A Dream

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“Broken Cell” — C.Birde, 8/20

“Don’t shake it.”

He speaks in distracted manner,

as of one who grasps deep understanding

of such things as cell phones –

broken –

that should not rattle & shift within themselves

with shivers of noise in enthralling fashion.

Don’t shake it.

But…

He said nothing of lifting it,

drawing it over lips, teeth, tongue,

feeling that seam incised in its length & sides,

of separating that seam so that gears &

circuitry & delicate inner workings

sift uniformly across the tongue,

crunch between molars, premolars, incisors,

move like coarse sand or grit or powdered glass

past pharynx & larynx

to scrape slowly, finally, at long last

d

o

w

n  

the trachea…

He said nothing of this.

Needless warning.

Uncalled for.

Implicitly

understood.

— C.Birde, 8/20