Best Eider Poems
HENRY THE SPIDER
Henry the spider was a spy of Eider
Sculled the boat in the river Schlechen Leider
The frog stole the scull
Octopus was dull
He clasped the hull close and kissed the outsider
HENRY THE SPIDER © Rajat kanti Chakrabarty November, 2014
Watch how easily souls are gathered
When words are falsely spent to mock
Unfettered as if hearts so mattered
Like tossing bread crumbs from a dock.
The least of ducklings are discerning
Fooled they're not by false repast
Paddling toward a chance of earning
While food through rippled currents last.
Fear rises from life's ledge
Only when you are looking down
Peering up from waters edge
Only warm sunlight can be found.
Trade only notes in eider down
And keep your carriage dry
Nary ye nest with unknown colors
And place not your fortune in a lie.
If it walks like a duck,
It could be a goose...
Feeding the Ducklings Contest
Judged 5/30/2016
Draped over the land like a ghostly shroud,
a blanket of morning mist
morphs into rolling banks of fog;
soft as an eider-filled duvet.
Dawn rebukes Night's claim to darkened skies
and armed with chisels of light,
sculpts ebony shadows
into shifting shapes,
sent scurrying into nooks and crevices.
Pink, indigo, and blue hues
expunge an ebony canvas of stars and moon;
as color emerges from first light.
While a bashful breeze blows silhouettes into disarray;
etch-a-sketching, a brand-new day.
And subtle sleeping sounds, slowly awaken;
giving voice to Nature:
while a scarlet sun silently shimmies up a crimson sky.
Yearly - for a spell - I come calling,
not unexpected.
But there are times my travel may be slow.
On such rare occasions when I’m late,
you’ll look and see the mountains’ crowns
remain uncovered,
and in the valley, meadow grasses
dance with gentle breezes,
reveling in verdancy prolonged.
Other times, I roll across the prairie bellowing.
Assassin of startled vegetation,
I wield a force God-given,
and even dry terrain, where soil is sand,
might feel the touch of my icy hand.
And though I be unwelcome,
I’m certain there’s a moment
you look out on a pristine field
where I have softly laid my eider down
or to a street now silenced
that strangely gleams in peaceful white.
Or maybe you gaze up at stately mountains’
lovely snow-capped crowns,
and in that tranquil moment,
you are awed.
For John Freeman's "the Pictures of winter Poetry Contest"
Eider down feathers
fall down around me
like snow from the sky,
I raise my arms
turn in a circle
and take in
the wanton
tempest
of my fury,
A lampshade flung
against a wall,
the base cracked,
the shade torn,
the bedside table
battered and rammed
against a dresser
like an abusive husband’s wife,
The mirror shattered
into a million pieces,
each one reflecting
a mask of rage,
someone I don’t recognize
glares back at me
from the ice like bits of glass,
The mattress ripped open,
springs popping out
like a hundred jack in the boxes,
only there were no jacks
or any boxes,
just rusted,old springs
flopping around like fish
in a sea of impotence,
And now,
with the pillows
sliced and flung
about the room,
a calming rain of feathers
slowly falls around me,
And I am at peace once again.
Power to the poet, power to the muse
power to those who dont refuse
to show their emotions under the sun
say it and sing it , a victory won
Power to truths that must be told
handed down from bards of olde
gifts of syllables crafted right
hanging oer your head tonight
waking you up to write them down
filled with fury and eider down
write that its okay to cry, to grieve for
those who had to die
To tell them they may hold the light
for others passing in the night
Power to the poet wracked with pain
who tells us all to try again
Power to the child inside the man
who wrote it down and said " I CAN "
Power to God who gives us the choice
to lift our heads and raise our voice.
Eider down comfort comfortably comforting
Distant imperceptible traumas unimaginable.
Feather pillow softly laid my head
As under a Mother Hen's wing
Unperturbable
But cold wood floors shock my soulless sole
From the foot of the bed.
Unconsolable.
Touching any metal un-gloved,
Turns skin to tin, fingers on fire,
Breathing inside what’s above,
Kindles lungs to a stinging pyre.
Exhaled steam is white as a dove.
Some find refuge wearing eider attire,
But hours exposure ends the tropical cove.
After a while the icy novelty tires,
As keeping calm means the need to move.
Snowmen dread mercury higher,
For melting’s their fateful groove.
Winter’s funeral march has its criers,
But in shivering’s end there is no lost love.
She descends from a summit vestibule
on powder fine as cotton down this day
of days in porcelain chiffon and tulle.
The winter firs in frost echo the way
her snowflake peau de soie in frozen jewel
cascades like waterfalls of ice. Tears weigh
the same as beaded pearls and just as cool;
they glisten in her bodice. The light plays
from a ghost sun inside them as in pools
of diamonds. She glides in mist-white sleigh
down slopes of eider, the cold glitter fools
even the nearest celebrant and strays
from hearts of men for she's just as cruel
as flood or famine on Winter's first day.
At the end of the day
I go back,
Travel the moments
Of my field-path-
Retrace the harvest
And seed
Placed as children
In eider cradles.
I hear the words. In autumn's silent verse
lie anapestic wafts of falling leaves
with golden syllables both bright and terse,
the crimson pluck of summer as it grieves
its loss of verdant shimmer. In the wake
of crisp and subtle gusts the florid blades
crescendo as the sunlight comes to slake
a thirst for saffron til the morning fades
into the afternoon. Throughout the day
as cherries black and sweet scaled up and down
the August clef these notes atonal splay
like drifting heart beats, every verb and noun
irregular. September's brusk intrude
has come to hold in taciturn embrace
the last of shy begonias, an etude
in bitter truth as spiders' tattered lace
lilts in wisteria. I hear the moans
of aimless cadence rattle through the trees
as nascent winter's catechumen hones
his hiemal vespers by dead white degrees.
I can't obsess. It's early fall, yet I
am not immune to meter in the loft
of birch unleafing to the gloaming sky.
And though the fledgling whisper is still soft
as eider I hear words. The coarse enjambed
reprises with the start and stop of wind
presage the future of a world that's dammed
in ice without damnation of the sinned.
I can't escape the scape. The pewter gape
of frost bound windows as October girds
for gelid isolation brings the scrape
of branches on the glass. I hear the words.
9/9/19
You lay in the wooden cot,
a broken sparrow,
Crushed. Bony. Frail.
Hair once plumed gold,
greyed to clumped feathers
like ragged trampled wings,
strawed out on the dank pillow.
Face once blushed pink plump,
Jolly kind of soft with life,
Sucked to bone. Nose to Beak.
Echoes of the mask it will soon become.
I stroked this woman
now bent back to foetus pose.
Once sworled to shell,
wrapped inside myself,
Safe.
Now boned to carcass stick.
I wanted to hold one more time,
my child,
frightened the last air would puff to nought from its hollowed breast.
But my sparrow turned and smiled,
a grimace to crack open any gates of envisaged hell.
Macabre teeth, once glowing love and laughter to the skies,
Now pecked to ochre stalks.
The pitiful bird pained to move.
Mucous mouth clacked open wide
To receive some lasting morsel of life.
Only its beady blue gaze
flashed a soul of its former self,
eyes to haunt the sea.
I swallowed back my tide of tears,
waves of memory flooding sands of life we’d shared,
from fledgling dawn cry to this,
the final nesting box.
I wanted to stuff this cot with down
of a million eider.
To cosset and hold soft this scrawn, gnawed through.
Pluck teal, goose, swan.
‘Who would have thought it would come to this?’ it croaked a laugh.
I matched smile with smile.
I held the tiny claw.
Desperate not to cling too much to pain,
too much to past.
I wanted to wrap up this dying bird
Limp, in my hanky.
White folded white, fold on fold.
Run through the streets
shouting at the world, at some unseen power.
NO.
She’s mine. She’s safe. Take me.
What cruelty did I do?
What evil must be stuffed in this maternal breast
To hold this daughter dust in my arms?
THE DUCK RUMBLE
Like a Bronx street cop I saw it coming : I could bet……
One gang protecting its turf against another’s threat.
The mallards were well past the river-bend just cruising,
Muscling in on eider-land - just asking for a bruising.
Two small eiders, silent smooth, swam without effort around
To the five big green-head mallards coming to face them down :
The eiders called for black-and-white back-up, six en masse
Thinking, yeah. . . . let’s kick some serious mallard ass.
Green-heads picked up speed, leaving a racy wake
Thinking, these migrants gotta learn who owns this lake.
The lead mallard picked his target, readied his beak
Who’s your daddy, he silently thought with no need to speak.
One peck at those eider wings and the rumble would be over.
It was. . . . . . . .the mallards quickly flapped their way back to cover.
Ducks don’t feel the need to kill each other;
Just a flap and a peck and no more bother.
It’s all settled with beak, and signed with plume, agreed.
Their lake had lots of room - no shouts, no violence - no need.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . .
Entered in Ryan Jackson's Contest "Animals on your mind..."
Winter Wonderland
Winter wonderland, white
icing on brown cake, mister
nor’easter’s icy breath, snow-
tires spin helplessly, caught in
eider down drifts, I would
rather be in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina!
NOVEMBER NIGHTFALL
Color falling, slow and steady,
covers sidewalks, gold already
crunching under feet, home trodding.
Wind blows tree tops, like heads nodding.
Early night-time’s dark disguises
draw out moonlight. High it rises!
Inside houses, people huddle.
Under blankets, pets they cuddle.
Sipping mugs of steaming cider,
propped on pillows, stuffed with eider,
folks then open books of stories:
quests, adventures, love, and glories!
Used: PS
November 25, 2020