Transience

If I hadn't read about those Tibetan monks

sweeping their sand mandalas into an urn, 

and dispersing them in flowing water

to symbolise the transience of art and life,

reminding me of Banksy's Balloon Girl

shredded during auction,transmuted by the hammer

 into Love is in the Bin,

I might have enjoyed the sun setting alight 

the under leaves of my Smoke Tree

from royal purple to claret red

or the reflection of hot lipped Salvias

through a window pane half ajar,

their open mouths prone to the suckling of honeybee

or the sun highlighting a ball of wool from West Yorkshire Spinners

catching the promise of Christmas in its Nutcracker glitter

and thought about the socks I would make out of that...

That's the kind of morning I could have had...

Copyright 2024 Cathy Leonard

Merlin to the rescue

 After days of being perplexed by a cry emanating from  a copse of trees I resorted to the wisdom of my Merlin bird app. 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 shorn feathers 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.

Copyright Cathy Leonard 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.

Copyright 2024 Cathy Leonard

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.

Copyright 2024 Cathy Leonard

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.....

Copyright 2024 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

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

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...

Copyright July 2024 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved