O' Strawberry Moon
Magnanimous beatitude and abundance boon
A beautiful glint off still waters
A shining hope for sons and daughters
Close and low you hang in a summer sky
With nightjars, fireflies, and nighthawks mystically flying by
Your warm, golden, reddish calmness looms
Man expresses gratitude for another sweet strawberry moon
Soon the forest would reveal its dark secret
Poems are written. Music is composed. Ballets are staged.
In enacting suspense-filled plays, each creature is engaged.
Mysteries, like petals of blossoming flowers, unfolded.
As sketched by nature, the shapes of plants and trees are moulded.
Midway through the brawl for existence, the fittest survive.
From Mother Earth, life-giving nectar, all creatures derive
Do trees pay tax as per their heights, and do beasts as per strength?
Which creature has measured the forest's height, breadth, width, and depth?
What serenity between drops of the flowing fountain!
Isn't there a transmission of peace between each mountain?
The food cycle and water cycle roll like the planets.
Prey and predator eye each other in forage facets.
Owls, bats, hawks, frogmouths, and nightjars share nocturnal secrets.
Some feed others. Some feed on others. There are ruts, no riots.
The gentle breeze soothes the soul, though the gales disturb
Love lives long, between the strongest tree and the weakest herb.
Doors of forests, yet, like puzzle-filled caves, are numerous
Amidst sunshine, unknown nooks in it are voluminous
Under the hedgerow,
nothing will fall apart, nor hold,
until a first milky dribble
is squeezed into the
mewing mouths of the newborn.
Small forms roll in their dim pelts,
nightjars swoop from branch to tree trunk,
bat calls return to receiving ears.
A child's dream grows a face-masked cloud,
small eyes appear behind a mattress of foliage,
clairvoyant glimmers of the yet to come.
Every dawn is a stranger, a nakedly visual light.
Gaps in the shrubbery coalesce,
to reveal a small industrial unit,
cogs and wheels run deep,
as they turn something into something.
Further back,
the goose-necked end of a small pond
curls morning mist into unworldly shapes,
will-of-the-whisps,
that drift in and out of an opening sky.
A yearning awakens,
one warm breath starts a dew-cold engine,
soon the seen, will be accelerating,
emerging once more into something else.
The sky canvas seems glittery.
Hiding a divine mystery
The red moon’s rays glow like ruby,
Sapphire stars shine so silvery.
Swift's shadows sing the sun's send-off.
Each shade shows nature's mastery.
Midst black-sheep clouds are a taut trough.
Sapphire stars shine so silvery.
Nighthawks and Nightjars perform plays.
Sky sails on stream periphery.
Hills and vales are in a grey haze
Sapphire stars shine so silvery.
The sky canvas seems glittery.
Sapphire stars shine so silvery.
God in the gloaming,
splits the violet horizon with lightning.
An assembly of angels of every nation and
tongue,
they're lifting coffins of great numbers of
war dead-
both military and civilians of all ages.
Dusky rolling fields of scarlet poppies,
nations united in collective sorrow,
lamentation of humankind,
then, a worldwide hush-
as nightjars sing a dirge of the universe. ~
As dusk hours darken the skies ever later
Crepuscular creatures return
Strisores awaken the heathland
As the heat of the day still rises from the earth.
Quietness blankets the world in black
So silent I hear only noise
Yet over the volume of nothingness
The nightjars are back with their voice.
The trilling incessant and echoing through
The forest, rebounds from the trees
Bringing the woodlands alive at night
As the sound travels far on the breeze.
Pausing only to breathe and break their song.
As I hold my breath to silence my body
Closing my eyes to strain and not to miss
A single note in their evening aria.
As I retire to my chamber
Window open to allow warm breeze
Finally as sleep creeps into my mind
The nightjars commence their diminuendo
The noise of the night retreats
Inky blackness taking over the sky
Dreams float through the dark
Accompanied by the memories of the day.
In the Appalachian hill country
there are night birds;
they call to each other in the dark
yet hunt alone.
These birds are not
owls but nightjars, they are known also
as whip-poor-wills, goatsuckers,
or bug-eaters by the locals.
When they utter they shiver
the ear-hairs of all that harken.
When clinging to a tree trunk
their dim mottled plumage
makes then almost invisible.
When they fly
they fly with no whisper of wings
but in an eerie silence.
Some folks around here
reckon they are more 'ghosts
of the air' than birds,
and are bad news.
The wise women
believe that they can curdle milk
and spoil the overnight vittles
left on the stove,
the menfolk smile
knowing
it was them that left the food out.
The night-birds swoop and flutter
without a pitter or a patter
until the dawn light reveals them
to be nowhere found
and still as silent as the stony ground.
What is happiness, I just wanted to know,
Was it the song of heavy rain or the breezy snow?
Was it a dance of colorful water fountain,
Or was it a beautiful sunflower covering the whole mountain?
The spell of rainbow across a shinning stars,
Or to see fireflies in a blanket of nightjars.
I was certain that happiness is something to be earned
As I became older, all the more I yearned,
In the process, I forgot to laugh,
and it feels as if happiness is just like falling graphs
I swarmed across the river
Where I saw leaves of trees fall and quiver,
I saw myself in the crystal clear reflection
And I understood that it was always about perception,
As I was curtains of a play has been lifted
I finally knew that life was gifted,
And it is how you take the life to be
That only if you smile, the exact reflection you'll see,
The same is the case with happiness that you want to achieve,
That's when you give it, only then you receive.
Birdwoman wore eagle, robin, osprey and owl.
In her hair, with a certain flair
Hummingbirds, swifts and waterfowl
Making their nest in her lovely hair
Birdwoman sported pelicans, penguins and egrets too
Wearing them proudly, none of them too loudly though
Nightjars, hornbills and beautiful jays of blue
Morning dove, blue footed boobie and silly dodo
Birdwoman wore her feathered friends with pride, to and fro.
She’s their protector, people said with reverence and awe.
She took them everywhere she ventured, don’t you know.
She loves cardinals, frogmouths, and a simple jackdaw.
Above the Blue Ridge hills
flights of stealth owl
glide in from the moon.
Strange how a jungle is never quiet
but these Tennessee woods
sleepwalk along moccasin paths
watched over by the velvet foliage
of dreaming tree.
Owls are the true eagles here,
they hunt the thriving flesh
and distain all that no longer trembles.
They do not scavenge
but scatter prey before them
hunting the huntable on sonic waves.
Sometimes on a summer night I leave a cabin
to walk among the owls and nightjars.
To sit silently listening to the rustle and scurry
of a timid pulse and the silent wings
of its pursuer.
Occasionally a deer is startled
by an incautious movement
sending it crashing through the dark brush.
I do not carry a gun here, but if I did
I would never break the silence of these woods
for the voices of the dead and the living
sing in the air as softly as stars do
when reflected in the eyes of hunting owls.
Sentinel, through cloud cover, as a lover discovering each other,
the moonbeam cuts the stillness of the secret night.
Illuminating nightjars in flight and denizens
of the dark embarking on their nocturnal ramblings.
Shambling, snuffling and shuffling
through fern and field and briars unyielding
thorny embrace, they race the dawn,
whilst the sleeping fawn dreams of sweet meadow grass.
Alas, the beams light is transient and ambient blackness is restored,
as dark, rolling clouds once more enshroud woodland,
moor and rocky tor until, once more,
the clouds are rent and another beam is sent.
Stabbing, grabbing the dark in stark illumination and yet,
it softly settles on bog cotton and nettles as a whisper to an ear,
translucent and clear, endearing itself to artists and lovers,
poets and others and mothers night feeding their young.
When the moth is on the wing
and only drunks and nightjars sing.
In that cloistered, muggy, midsummer night
when pipistrel and owl take flight.
And the moon plays hide and seek with cloud
and creatures hide 'neath woodland shroud.
I rise from sweated slumber deep,
for I have promises yet to keep.
So I steal away into the indigo night
and startle corncrakes into flight.
As I wander, barefoot, through dew soaked grass,
to keep my vigil, no man I pass.
At dark rocks edge by the foaming sea
my thoughts meander, as your face I see.
In moonbeams glare I heave a sigh
and cry in anguish, "Why? Why? Why?"
Night filters sight and sound
into caves of awareness
where owls and nightjars
clatter, where timorous creatures
forage and snuffle.
The forest has gathered here
for generations, it has its own language
ground through layers of nocturnal
sentience.
In the silent cabin they interface,
trace resonations between the unseen,
lull me into a deep-listening.
The night lends meaning
to each arboreal sound
as root and branch intone
their ancient prayers -
sounds that later turn to words,
an arboreal poetry
that reads me to sleep.
sun-kissed briars droop
summer blisters scar grey twigs
cypress leaves ooze sweat
nightjars scoop dry ice
v ripples on rain starved ponds
homing pigeon’s drought
Date Created : 26/6/2020 Twenty sixth June 2020
Tania Kitchin’s Summer Haiku Poetry Contest
I have a passion to hold a lamp aloft,
to capture one acre of starshine
before the sun writes a new dawn.
Rusting Chevys bloom in the half-light.
Nightjars depart on shadow wings.
Shimmering’s walk toward my window
on silver slippers.
A native mildness calls me out
to the green hollows
where poppies cling to secrets.
I’ve a yen to lean like a greening barn
that’s honeycombed with sky.
The dew bathes, hills run with deer.
The woods hold aloft their nocturnal dreams
while the sky turns those to mist
I am invited to be kin,
to the verdigris of millstones,
to the mist and blood
of feuding legends,
to the weather-worn
secluded places
where dirt roads end
and life proclaims
its right to be free.
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