Scattered folds of night
litter bright mown grasses
spring up into the air
startled, flapping
at our arrival
We watch them wheel and
turn above us
spot a Red Kite floating high
turn again, caw to each other
settle under advantageous trees
Kite eats carrion not crow
Copyright © 2022 Kim Whysall-Hammond
For this week’s earthweal challenge, we are asked to “write of WILD MIND. How does green fire take root in the thought of our poems?”
I am offering up a little vignette of parkife here in my small town. After a morning of Internet research for a local project, I took a walk, and was lifted by my local birds.
The Cheesesellers Wife 
How I love to see Red Kites! There aren’t any round here, but I used to always see them on the M1 around Buckinghamshire, I think!
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They are so beautiful….
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Thanks Kim 😊
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Nothing like a walk in the park amoungst the birds for an uplift. Love your birds!
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Thank you Yvonne.
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Love the encounter of this, so deeply immersed there is only wild mind.
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Thank you!
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I love these descriptions of birds. Seeing them on a morning walk can change the way an entire days unfolds. :)
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Yes, it certainly can!
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I love a poem with birds in it. I love their true voices, so much clearer than ours. A wonderful poem. We have so many crows here. Ravens, too. But the crows are noisier. We locals have to grin at the tourists who leave their bags of groceries in the backs of their pickups, or untended at the beach, and come back to find crows having a raucuous party!
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There is a huge Rookery in a stand of tall trees in the middle of my towns motorway junction. Their arguments are often noisier than the traffic!
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Birds…our lives would be impossible without them. (K)
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I agree!
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There’s ‘wild’ in that very first line, and it soars through your poem like the birds.
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Thank you Jane!
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What a perfect description of crow this poem opens with. Absolutely love them.
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Thank you, that’s much appreciated!
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How wonderful that the arrival of crows chases the litter of night which rises like birds. That is a startling new image to me, and I believe it. The alliterated wit of your last line might just be the arrival of a human in an otherwise bird level narrative. Yesterday my lawn was littered with winter starlings. Today they are replaced by robins! Sping!
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:)
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