They say not the dove first but the raven,
sent out to fly back and forth across the earth
all in shadow, until the waters had dried up
and the penitent returned with their paired
beasts and the seeds of future gardens
pressed in the crevices of their palms.
But memory, long and bright in the sun,
shrivels in darkness or solitude. In the stories,
the bird is only a herald: it brings back
proof that something in the void sustains,
with wings that change color too: not always
sooty or dark, but touched with flame
like a breast or the fruit of a heart
offered up to the soul. And oh it wants
so much to be dissolved in the hour of its
most brooding need— what it seeks in the cup
not charity but some form of kindness, mercy.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
*and after Clive Hicks-Jenkins’ “The Prophet Fed by a Raven”
Dave,
Cross posting this, too, in response to your TMP and to Clive’s painting, or how he might paint the “intimations” I talk about here. I’ve got his website now, so I might do some ekphrastic poems later. (Note the Jenkins strophe below. (:–))
INTIMATIONS ON A CANVAS
It would be a classic Dali: bleached carcass
limp on a branch like a wayward pancake
and a brittle bracken leaf thrown over it,
instead of melting clocks draped in a landscape
of swarming ants and a piece of Catalonia.
Would the stalking feral feline be a Kahlo
then? And the gamboling arboreal rodents
a persistent memory of an abandoned lunch
where Monet could have etched them gleaning
atop a table that has not been cleared away,
instead of his son Jean playing quietly
alone in the dappled shade where sunlight
falls and the colour sparkles? And the sodden
cat’s gravel gray fur? And the palpable tension
there? Clive Hicks-Jenkins, sipping Welsh tea,
could easily paint that in a corner of his canvas
between a raven and a firebird and let it bode
disaster for those absently unheeding squirrels.
Except that he would not. He is too gentle.
He would have those rodents dancing with the cat.
—Albert B. Casuga
06-11-11
Well you’ve got me there Albert! It’s true, I would have the squirrels dancing with the cat. (Except there’s no cat!) Sometimes when I look out at the grass under the apple tree in our drive where I feed the birds, it’s too damned close for comfort to that scene in Snow White where many small woodland creatures gambol together. Rooks, pheasants, baby rabbits and yes, squirrels, forage for seed fallen from the feeders rigged for the smaller birds. Now I just have to teach them how to do my laundry!
Ah, the gentle mercies of being around still. After the laundry, what? Clive, I enjoyed your gallery. (:– )]