Bird- not- Cat Tales

Forensic Meanderings

Finding a dead bird, possibly a blackbird,

hard to tell, it was mutilated,

incision five centimetres deep in the abdomen,

weapon unclear, skin still lustrous,

approximate time of death-recent

wings-clipped, beak-cleaved off,

head-intact but eschew,

its hollow bones and air sacs

rendering it weightless in my hand

 

And I wondered who the opportunistic predator

or scavenger might have been?

 

A cat would have brought it home,

at least mine would have,

and a fox would finish it off

or hide it for later retrieval.

I buried it under a thick pile of leaves

knowing full well that it would be disinterred

by the next opportunistic scavenger who happened by.

 

But the whole sorry business set me thinking

about mortality and immortality

and the symbolism of finding a dead bird,

and inevitably led me to the issue of my own demise

and the choice between cremation or burial as the preferred option

and of how Bob Hope on his death bed when asked by his wife which he preferred?

answered “Surprise me!”

 

According to Google I should have double bagged the carcass

and relegated it to the trash can- and by way of an aside-

did you know that picking up feathers, even from the ground,

is against federal law, at least in the States,

where most of our Google speak comes from.

Enacted in 1918 to protect the species from

the feathers for women’s hats trend

so rampant at the time-

 

But getting back to my own dilemma

that the blackbird is simultaneously a harbinger of change

and an emissary from the devil

I’m left confused as to the disposal of the body

the meaning of my encounter with a dead bird

and the perpetrator of the crime

if there was one

 

Copyright 2022 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

PS found a piece on the Net by Julie Craves University of Michigan who, in the event of finding a dead bird, advises us to leave it or move it out of the way and let nature take its course.. I say Hooray to that.

ttps://www.birdwatchingdaily.com/beginners/birding-faq/julie-craves-explains-what-to-do-if-you-find-a-dead-bird/

Non-Shed Varieties- Poetry Prompt

 

I mentioned earlier in the week that it's an idea to jot down likely opening lines/titles that land on your shoulder with a view to developing them later... Here is one of those  and a pic of Miss Molly, one of Rover's offspring...

Dog Hair Will Travel

It's the rave to buy cross-breed dogs these days.

I don't mean the mongrel variety begot by roving Rover

from the other side of the street

who courts every bitch in heat on the block,

But designer hybrids- the non shed type-

 

Like the Noble Spruce that doesn’t

drop its needles before reaching home

and shed non-stop all the way to Christmas

causing the robot vacuum to clog up

and domestic violence to soar.

 

My friend’s just bought a hypoallergenic dog

not a Pitsky or a Morky but a Newfypoo

I could tell her from anecdotal evidence

that it doesn’t always work,

that there's really no such thing as a non-shedding dog,

That the Newfy compulsion to shed in Spring and Fall gene 

often prevails,

that she may live to regret her hybrid model

and rue the day 

she didn’t just buy a poodle.

Copyright 2022 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

Poetry Day

 

I was intending to re-blog one of my better poems today…to lift my spirits a bit ...but the poem below sort of hopped into my backpack on my way back from the park this morning and winged itself right through my front door.

 

The Brigade

 

I’d call us the Territorial Brigade

And we’ve planned an assault on M&S

A concerted morning raid

In pursuit of camouflage

Shorts for the summer

(If there is one)

 

Luna’s Mum started it last year

How we coveted those deep-throat pockets

Generous enough to contain the gear, the leashes,

Wind blocker caps, folding trowels, flashlight snipers

Essential morning mission equipment

For all-year-round engagement with the elements

 

And we’re all learning a foreign language

A buffer, in the event of invasion

Or overseas postings or even a holiday.

Most of it Hola! or Viel Spaß!

Junior Cert syllabus course material

Old school, old style, always works.

 

And in these days where the local has expanded

Beyond the village church and bell, 

It’s good to belong to a brigade, any brigade,

Even the Morning Combat Dog Walkers on Parade.

Copyright 2022 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

 

Cat Alarm

To eke a poem out of nowhere this morning I sat down to do those morning pages Julia Cameron recommended all those years ago. I had hardly put pen to paper when Sherlock, who was curled up napping when I started, began scratching at the door looking out so ... 

I'll do those pages tomorrow

Cat Alarm

He wants out, he wants in.

My head is getting in a spin.

I'd really like to keep the heat in

But he wants out and then he wants in.

His fine hair strays out of arm's reaches

To chimney grate corners and under-stair places,

And his gifts leave a map of his morning sorties

Through burrows and hollows and neighbourhood trees,

And he flops on the newspaper just when I'm reading

This really does get to me, leaves me fuming,

And he'll swat off the table the pen that I use

Just to watch where it goes, his favourite ruse-

But I'd rather lose head or heat or arm,

Have broadsheet shredded and pen disarmed,

Be discommoded and oft alarmed

Than be without his fatal charm.

Struggling to Write a Sonnet

 

Today's idea for a poem came to me while walking Miss Molly in the woods, as per usual.

 Opening line "If I only had more time..." 

It was to be about trees and tree recognition. There's a name for it. I'll look it up later.

So I get home but the poem's just not cooperating with me. Time for tea. 

I come back and this lands on the page...

Tea Break.

While wrestling with a poem about having no time

I made a cup of tea, 

admired my pot of fuchsia in the garden,

packed my left-over couscous for a take-a-way lunch,

gave the cat his third sup of milk,

tried to remember the rhyme scheme for a Petrarchan sonnet

and its metre, if that wasn't going too far,

thought a Shakespearean one might do instead

But instead of writing that poem

All on the subject of trees and leaf recognition

and having no time

I decided that this poem might do instead

which as you see is not quite on theme

as I appear to have all the time in the world.

Copyright 2022 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved.

Maybe that Petrarchan sonnet will appear some other day....

City Parks

 

THE STYLIST

 

Nobody sees him shave his trails but in the evening they are there

turning our park woodland into a gallery of buzz cuts, long and short,

opening up our possibilities,

giving us choices we never knew we had.

 

A high taper with scalp exposure in front of the big Ash.

To the left, a clean shaven trail that cuts through fields of daisies,

and, to the right, a razed trail that weaves and curves through common vetch,

its clinging tendrils wrapped around its neighbours.

 

A mane with shaved sides circles the Beech,

enticing us past stinging nettles that skirt

a hedge of bramble, not yet ripe, and ribwort plantain,

its ovary capsules spilling seeds at our feet.

 

Or past a butch cut that slices through a clump of dandelion,

their jagged teeth, dents-de-lion, in various stages of growth,

some bright yellow heads threatening closure with the scent of rain,

and gossamer balls of seeds  shedding themselves in our wake.

 

A stroke of his blade and a stubble path is shaven with precision

through tall grass sporting hogweed five feet tall.

A V junction creates a crown of creeping buttercups

drawing the eye to a newly planted Oak.

 

He’ll be back tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that.

Restyling and regrooming our park.

The man on the grass mower tractor

from Dunlaoghaire-Rathdown County Council.

 

Copyright 2022 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

Sunday poem-Zaro Weil

 

Well yesterday was Shakespeare Day, according to an email I got from Poetry Foundation ,and my plan was to blog about that. But as usual I got distracted and scrolled down into the kids' poems. I love kids poems because I usually understand them ,which is not always the case in adult categories. And thus scrolling I discovered an author called Zaro Weil.

 I loved the 59 second rendition of her poem which you can listen to following the link.

A parade of Beast Doodles

And when I googled her website I found more to like. 

She is an American living in a hill top farmhouse in the South of France. (I fancy that too).

She started out as a dancer and worked a lot with children through circus theatre. She also collected quilts, over a hundred of them, and some dating back to the mid nineteenth century and has written a book or two about that.

I loved her definition of poetry as "having a lot to do with discovering meaning through an unusual heart throbbing placement of words"

And

"Using language to break the mood of the everyday and pitch us into new and show stopping ways of experiencing and reimagining the world."

On Sundays I indulge myself on exactly that. Hope you enjoy her poems too.

http://zaroweil.com/blog-for-books-for-topics/