“Light returns!”
Her voice glittered
on the wind’s bladed edge.
“Feed your heartfire
on this everlasting
hope.”
— C.Birde, 1/21
“Winter Solstice” — 12/18
On this,
the year’s longest
night,
the tide of dark
steps to the edge,
reverses course
t
o
w
a
r
d
light.
— C.Birde, 12/18
“Limits” — C.Birde, 11/18
Concealing,
revealing in equal turns,
the length and breadth
of night extends
its reach,
paints the lonesome
oaks —
bereft of leaves —
in silence…
Feeling our way
to the edges of that
darkened,
incurious landscape —
heeding, perhaps,
the dormant promise
of dreams and rest and
contemplation —
we hold aloft spheres
of shivering,
self-limiting light,
fearful of what we might
discover.
— C.Birde, 11/18
“Conjuration” — C.Birde, 11/18
Light
slips through our
grasp…
Each hour of each day —
paler, thinner,
more threadbare than
its yesterday.
Plumed
in solar flares,
our tongues regale each other
with half-remembered
tales of milder days —
songs of Crow and Centaurus,
and the Great Bear,
of the Herdsman
and his starry flock
spread across the night sky’s
vast backdrop.
Frost-touched,
we’ll pause together
at Winters’ gate and,
reminiscing,
conjure
light.
— C.Birde, 11/18
“Triptych Window” — C.Birde, 11/18
A cloak of feathers.
Tier upon tier – swan and goose and snowy owl.
It floats gently about the form;
delicately, restlessly skims shoulders, limbs, and torso.
White as the moonlight gathered
from that heavenly body adrift in the night sky.
Aglow, each feather gleams and shimmers in the otherwise darkened room.
A room of gray stone – heavy with antiquity – arranged to form a turret;
to form, on its exterior curve, a large bay of triptych windows.
Decorated with scrolling grillwork, each of that trio stretches upward
toward the ceiling’s inverted, conical peak.
Undressed, the windows beg the moonlight’s entry,
plead,
invite,
as if that tide of light could be denied.
Feathers — silver-limned, separate and together.
The satin-clad bed at the room’s center — softly aglow.
The seam of light that leaks past the bathroom door’s blunt rectangular face —
challenged.
Voices beyond that door…
No.
Ignore them.
Do not heed their whispering; their arguing, incessant hiss.
Do not listen or be distracted.
Return to the triptych window, to its stone seat and summons.
Rest upon its cushions – crushed velvet, indigo blue;
Sit, clad in feathers and moonlight,
beside the pair of over-sized and venerable gray rabbits.
Stroke the rabbits’ soft fur, until one hops down, away,
ducks to hide beneath the bed’s satin skirt.
Peer out the window, out into the darkling night
from within the turret’s giddy height.
Over silvered, grassy lawns so far below.
Past the castle’s humped and shadowed torso
to the turret opposite, twin to this.
See there?
Those triptych windows, lit to glowing beyond parted scarlet drapes?
Someone moves within that other room.
Bathed in brimming, golden light —
another soul.
— C.Birde, 11/18
“Joe Pye Weed” — C.Birde, 9/18
He wore the light
of the last day
of Summer
— in his hair —
like a
crown
ablaze.
— C.Birde, 9/18
“Firefly” — C.Birde,, 7/18
Fire flies…
Embers borne on
the tails of winged insects
etch our Fate on the night’s bowed back.
Fireflies.
— C.Birde, 7/18
“Longing” — C.Birde, 6/18
With ladder, broom,
and twine,
we train —
the vines and I;
together climb
toward light,
extend and weave,
tendrils seeking,
inch by precious inch,
height and purchase,
something solid
on which to cling
in our abiding
search.
— C.Birde, 6/18
“Scintillation” — C.Birde, 3/18
Void.
Expanse.
Boundless field of dark – inky, plush, coal-black. Pressed against eyelids. Consuming vision.
Light pricks — winks and blinks and scintillates. Golden, glittering. A multiplicity of individual, shivering stars within and against the dark — entering breath and pores, veins and mind.
Carry it.
Upon waking, carry it from dream, out into the world. Feed it to every word, every thought and action. Let it bloom in outstretched hands, shape tongue’s speech, heart’s beat.
Then everything,
— everything –
will shift…
Change…
Heal…
— C.Birde, 3/18