A Poem For Thursday

Revelation Day

This morning

In particular.

This morning…

After the afternoon

Even before the evening

And this morning…

My feelings

Are too powerful to ignore.

Stirred up are feelings

Long time hidden

Under plastic washable

Keep it clean-ness.

Today they are revealed.

I remember soldiers

In blue cotton suits

Limping

Up the hill...

Up to the red brick hospital.

To the building that dare not speak it’s name

Too much to think of

Too much to answer to.

I remember soldiers

White-faced

Empty-eyed.

Gazing out of steamed up bus windows

Making their way

Back

To some safety.

Back up the hill.

Making me nervous.

Watching me

The child watching.

The child feeling

Fear that oozed from every glance.

Fear that hit me

As it had hit them…

That tried to envelope me

That caused me to run

To avoid that

Which I would never know.

Strong emotions

In a culture

Hidden 

Under

Beneath

Inside and away.

Away  away.

Revelation can take a life time.

Today is revelation day.

We went to the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester yesterday to see an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's book "Orlando". I find that theatre often releases long gone memories in me...and so it was with this. 

The poem has really nothing at all to do with the story of Orlando but somehow this is what came tumbling out today.

I'm linking in with DeVerse today....I think that the poem fits the bill......thankyou Brian for the prompt!

Craws!

The Twa Corbies by Arthur Rackham

Peter Davies article in the Times this morning...(on page 30) has inspired me to write about some of my favourite birds.

Crow family...or as dad always called them in his Armagh brogue...

"The Craws".

I have a board on my Pinterest site dedicated to these amazing creatures.
One of my most loved of Aesop's fables...always to be found in Arthur Mee's Encyclopedia for Children....
( beloved books of information long before wikipedia!)
...was the one about the clever crow who dropped  stones one by one into a jug of water, until the level was high enough for him to drink out of it!  How good is that?!

Peter Davies mentions not only the intelligence of these birds, but also their sense of humour.

We  two sat last Friday in the Rotunda bar at The Midland in Morecambe watching two crows pick  stones up off the beach...
...fly up to about ten feet...do a kind of back flip and as they were doing it...drop the stones on the pebbles.
Were they trying to break open some mussels?....or was it just for fun?...either way they had a great time.
And we had a great time watching them.

Icelandic Raven.

Crows are found in so many differing cultural stories.
In Irish mythology...crows are associated with Morrigan, the goddess of war and death.
In Cornwall magpies are feared as associated with the other world, and thence the respect shown by some when they encounter one of these birds.
Norse mythology has a pair of ravens flying around the world and bringing news back to Odin.
And then there is the wonderful ancient flood saga where Noah sends the raven off to find land twice...
...second time it doesn't come back...
...land at last!

I really think that for me the reason for my facination is actually just the way dad would say....

...."craw" ....

and there would be that smile playing conspiritorially around his blue, blue eyes!

Lots of information from Wikipedia....naturally!