One Part Invention

 
The earth leans,
the waves rise up,
the raindrops fall,
the snow piles.

We feel nature's complexity
and reassurance in
steady Bach measures;
the perfect interweaving
of chordal harmonies
fortify our spirit.

Patterns ever changing,
while repeating,
calm and comfort us
with the same warmth
and reassurance
as the kitchen table,
a baking apple strudel.

Our spirits lift.
We forge ahead.

(c) Gay Reiser Cannon * All Rights Reserved * 2.28.15

Left In Coole

Migrating Wild Swans  by Gay Reiser Cannon
Published by Winnipeg Free Press

I wake to find the swans have flown away;
their honking calls have ceased; the rushes stilled.
No more their graceful glides upon the lake;
now autumn's passed, my aging body's chilled.

The conversation's brief, no warmth of love.
I wake to find the swans have flown away;
I search for sounds of wheeling up above,
but hear instead soft chirps of birds who stay.

Cold floorboards creak, the grate emits no flame.
I wrap my doubts inside my old gray shawl --
I wake to find the swans have flown away
beyond the feathered clouds, the castle's wall.

I wait within and bear the solitude;
the window frost conceals my masquerade.
The wind and trees sing frozen winter tunes,
I wake to find the swans have flown away.

© Gay Reiser Cannon * All Rights Reserved
Preview for FormForAll @dVersePoets Pub
12/6/2012 - posted for #OLN

Variation on a Quatern - where five meets four
four stanzas - four lines - five feet iambic pentameter
Refrain line quoted from W.B. Yeats'
Wild Swans at Coole

A MURDER OF CROWS

Four Crows 

It is January and there are crows like black flowers on the snow.                                        (1)
The temple where crow worships walks forward in tall, black grass                                    (2)
God, disgusted with man turned towards heaven, and man, disgusted with God, 
turned towards Eve, but Crow ........Crow nailed them together,                                         (3)
never plaintive nor appealing, quite at home when ..stealing,
"I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads."                                                                                     (4)

So man cried, but with God's voice
And God bled with man's voice.
Crow grinned crying "This is my Creation" Flying the black flag of himself.                           (5)

And comes that other fall we name the fall. The bird would cease and be
as other birds, but that he knows in singing not to sing.                                                         (6)
The question that he frames in all but words is what to make of a diminished thing.                (7)
The free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream
till the current ends and dips his wings in the orange sun rays and dares to claim
the sky. (8) Among twenty snowy mountains, the only moving thing .. the eye of the
blackbird. A man and a woman are one, a man and a woman and a blackbird
are one. (9)  And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?                                      (10)
Splashes of pepper
        Spice an empty blue bowl--                                                                                           (11)
                     How the crows dream of you, caught at last in their black beaks. Dream of you
leaking your life away. Your wings crumbling like old bark. Feathers falling from your breast 
like leaves, and your eyes two bolts of lightning gone to sleep.The litany of lonesomeness leaves 
nothing left for the crow's rosary to be counted on.  In the weepdusk, he cries in a deafening 
crowd,
"Carry on waiting, carrion.  Carrion waiting!"                                                                          (12)
Wings dark as midnight glittering on snow ...harsh crude mocking cries...faint whispers
of ..knotty sheen..ever ...wait -- patiently in darkened clefts of ...gray green yews.                   (13)
Finally, just under the clouds...streaming across the sky, its feet like black leaves                     (14)
            When the blackbird flies out of sight, It marks the edge 
                                                                                         of one of many circles.                    (9)

A Cento for FormForAll hosted today by the illustrious Sam Peralta @dVersePoets Pub 
Compiled by Gay Reiser Cannon * 9/27/2012

Attributions:
(1)   Crows, 1990 © Mary Oliver
(2)   Crow Law, 1993 © Linda Hogan
(3)   Crow Blacker Than Ever © Ted Hughes
(4)   Hawk Roosting © Ted Hughes
(5)   Crows © Ted Hughes
(6)   The Crow © John Burroughs
(7)   The Oven Bird © Robert Frost
(8)   I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings © Maya Angelou
(9)   Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird I, IV, IX © Wallace Stevens
(10)  Crow's Rosary, 1987, Scott Edward Anderson
(11)  The Blackbird © John Clare
(12)  In The Pine Woods Crow & Owl, © Mary Oliver
(13)  Crows, 1998 © Michael Collings
(14)  The Swan © Mary Oliver

A Winter Sunset

Clouds freeze the winter sky
bare-bones of bark crisscross it,
soul haunting as a woman’s cry.

The aging house sags against
its ghostly garden in shredded rags
of summer’s last silhouette.

Sullen wind shrieks through shadows
whipping loosened boards leaving
frost to veil the timeworn windows.

An aperture to sky opens and
a single ray of light, delicate as a thread,
reveals a dried and broken chrysalis.

What butterfly has fled?

(c) Gay Reiser Cannon * All Rights Reserved