Bake-a-yarn

Saturday 27 July 2024

Merlin to the rescue

After days of being perplexed by a cry emanating from a copse of trees I resorted to the wisdom of Merlin. I'd been thinking fox or fox cub, maybe in distress, and had been trawling through the thicket at 7 a.m. looking for a wounded creature.

The creature turns out to be a sparrow hawk and far from distressed I'd say it's making a meal of it, surrounded as it is by wrens, robins, blue tits and siskins....

Am reposting a poem I wrote a few months ago about the sparrow hawk that visited our back garden.

https://birdwatchireland.ie/birds/sparrowhawk/

The Killing Field

He would have had his head tilted listening for earthworms.

He wouldn't have noticed a shadow hugging the ground

or heard the short wings swooping the air

propelling the raptor forward, its long tail fanned out

to break speed.

The last thing the blackbird saw was the yellow eyed sparrow hawk

fixing it in a deadly stare before claws descending

left feathers shorn blacken the air.

What we saw looking out our kitchen window

was a hooked beak delve into bird skull

and strong yellow legs pin their prey to the ground.

It was too late to save the songster

and probably unwise.

Friday 26 July 2024

The Flying Fox

Something is moving in the attic.

You can’t see it but you can hear its echosound

the whoosh of papery, velvety wings

whirling in elliptical orbit around your head.

If you were in the city you’d think you were dreaming,

You probably would be.

But here in a country loft you’re thinking birds,

the Alfred Hitchcock sort, and all you need is the soundtrack

to jolt you into Tippi Hedren terror.

And when you do turn up the lights

the sight of what looks like a flying fox

wheeling past your ear in pursuit of its daily intake

of hexapod invertebrates is not reassuring.

You do not delay to determine its genus

whether it’s a Common Pipistrelle or a Soprano

but high tail it promptly out of rustic bliss.

Thursday 25 July 2024

Cat Alarm

When I say I'm an early riser

I don't mean this early

for I've been listening to Kitty overhead

kneading the carpet upstairs with gusto,

I will meet half of its wool fibres

in the stairwell later in the day,

and despite rolling over on my side

he has now moved on to scratching

the newly painted sitting room door

adding white claw polish

to the satin gloss highlights

he acquired yesterday

when I was painting it-

when I say I like rising early

I don't mean on this type of day.

Wednesday 10 July 2024

A Day Off

Having a "day off" strikes me

as an odd way to put it, as the poet says,

angling across broad leafy avenues,

being engulfed by the green of a park*

Even when applied to knitting socks or doing cross-word puzzles,

for there's a lot of mental effort exerted in turning

that heel or retrieving a word like creel from your memory bank

if it was ever there in the first place-

And what is leisurely about identifying those wildflowers

that bedeck the side of the road or woodsy trail

while engaged in angling across avenues

or engulfed in that green park?

while dealing with the nagging questions that ensue

from your perusal of Plantnet-

like whoever thought to name that flower

a blue button haze and that grass a Yorkshire mist?

And so begin your travails in the area of etymology

taking you through Middle English, old English,Anglo Saxon and beyond.

And what with all this ruminating and time travelling...

I'd rather call it a"day on"...

And ruminating, if you want to know,

comes from the Latin word ruminatus

coming from rumen meaning gullet

and refers to cows chewing the cud.....

* Billy Collins, of course. Sirens in his collection The Rain In Portugal, Picador Poetry

Wednesday 3 July 2024

Merlin Magic

My Merlin bird app can't locate me

which is hardly surprising, for my Galaxy A54

sets the time at 5.17am, August 1st, a year ago

and I don't even know where I was then.

It would probably help

if I actually did pay as I go

but Merlin being a wizard of course

has managed to conjure regardless

And so I have apparently, and likely enough,recorded

the call of oyster catchers and red billed choughs

and meadow pipits and sand pipers

on my sojourn along Lamb's head

But the non migratory Appalachian ruffed grouse

and the sapsucker,likewise of Canadian ilk

and migratory only as far as Central America

seem a conjuring feat too far

(Though Merlin was a shapeshifter himself

from man to fish to squirrel to turtle to hare,

not forgetting caterpillar,mouse,crab and goat

and always in blue)

So it might be a plan next time I stroll

to the drumroll of the Atlantic

along Derrynane Bay

to actually pay as I go...

Monday 17 June 2024

Hat Talk

A visit to Kate Betts' workshop in Harold's Cross with a couple of friends turned into a bit of an adventure and prompted this little poem. For info about Kate and her work follow the link below.

https://millinery.info/2019/06/kate-betts/

Hat Talk

Today in her workshop we don boaters and crowns

fedoras, pill boxes, visors and perches

and the talk is of sinamay, hemp and parasisals

and net mesh and linen, wool, straw, angora

and the power of steam and pins to launch the two dimension,

from bend- to stretch- to rise- to jump- turn and glide -

and of fibres that lean to their own liking.

And so we pirouette before the full length mirror

talk of high couture, wedding allure and gala invitations

and A day at the Races crowned with feathers and fascinators

and the power of the hat to propel us in our imagination

to banquet hall- to cat walk- to red carpet gathering-

but we come home elated with our homely visors

patches of shade for Summer meanderings.

Oil painting in the background is oil on Canvas. A day at the Races by Claire Bunbury

https://www.facebook.com/p/Claire-Bunbury-Art-100063628504188/

Friday 24 May 2024

The Immortals

My neighbour tends to buy me plaques

ornamental garden ones

metal versions of the creatures that stalk my garden.

There’s the pink cat on the back fence

paw perpetually poised

but doomed to never catch its prey

And below him the butterfly pinned

in seasons’ rusted hues, wings extended at full span

graced to ever evade pink cat’s maw.

I have added to these a quartet of cats

in a neat row but facing backwards

tails curled for an adventure never to be embarked upon

Much like Yeats' birds of hammered gold

eternally endeavouring

to keep that drowsy emperor awake

All this straining futility, immortal as it is,

is enough to remind me to savour

this morning’s breakfast tea and toast.