a Poem for Thursday....Preston Patrick in March

Preston Patrick in March

Preston Patrick in March.

 If you don’t hurt crows

They won’t hurt you

My father said

And I believed him.

Chorus :-

While water drips

In a blue plastic drum

Water runs from

A pipe in the yard

Water brown bubbling

And smelling strong.

In the ring of trees

Black branched

Against a pearly sky

Crows weave nests.

Chorus:-

Ghost trees hover high

On early green hills

And mist and low cloud

Merge in distant perspectives.

Chorus:-

There sits a flatbed trailer

Unmoved by their caws

And rusty supports form

As iron oxidises.

Chorus:-

The inspiration for the first stanza came out of a poem by Vicki Feaver in her  book,

 “The Handless Maiden”…Cape Poetry

Wasps…

“If you don’t hurt wasps

They won’t hurt you

My father told me.

But I didn’t believe him,”

A Poem for Thursday

The Midlanders

..a man was killed on the tracks, today.

I waited on platform two

for the train coming down from Glasgow.

Today... damp,cold,misty day in the north.

This middle England...

(Trains with no drivers)

of semis and trees...

(Drivers with no trains.)

ponies,cows and sheep.

A reassuring voice

reminds us

to take care when stepping down onto the platform.

Patient passengers

gaze silently

through

steamed up carriage windows .

Travelling in timelessness

each cocooned in their own dramas.

Business men,young mothers,grandparents.

Wheels turn almost without noise

over tracks...

and

in the trees

crows await rich pickings.

Going home
this is England
at it's most crowded.
Middle and everything.
All languages, all sizes, all ages.
All trying to get home.
Some get on the train.
Some  abandon the try....
Far from home...
Far from the destination.

Now I believe what they tell me...
...everything in everyway
ends in chaos.

Open Link Night ~ Week 70

Linking up to dVerse this week...it's been a while since I had the time to do it and ....miss it!!!

Some pics from the Bay.

I took these this week on one of those soft, still autumn days that I love.

.

I like this grass ....but it has swamped Grange...and now it is "over grass"...not "over sand"!

We need the sand for the children to play on.

harbour wrack...

 

...lime and cherry...two trees in the street getting ready for the big shut down...

(still playing around with editing and trying to get my own style!...it works sometimes I think!)

"The Big Fight!"

Ohhhh!

Very exciting watchings in the garden at lunch time today...a big fierce fight.
...Buzzard  v  "Craws"....
...that's magpies and crows to the more informed!

I'm in the kitchen preparing a pan of soup...home made, delicious tho' I say so myself...
...the potter is next door in the studio glazing puffins...a good seller by the way...

and then the kerfuffle and the screaming of the birds... a lot of noise and beating of wings.

I had put out the seed, worms and peanuts as usual earlier. Mostly blackbirds, robins and bluetits frequent the "stall!" Oh yes and of course, those fat waddlers of the field...the wood pigeons.
But now and again the magpies will swoop in and devour the lot.
So whether the buzzard had foolishly come over at the same time as the "mags"... I'm not sure.
But one of them had the buzzard by the throat and another had it by the leg and the feathers were flying
... and we were left gobsmacked ...as they say!

The pack of crows that nest in the highest trees down the field , had gathered on the tops of the bushes nearby... crawing and jumping up and down like mad things.
The rest of the magpies who normally compete with the crows ...had joined the throng and were flying and swooping down on the fight taking place on the bird feeding stall.

I wasn't sure where to put my money. At times, the crows will beat off the little birds, and of course the magpies eat their eggs and babies....such is the reality of lovely nature...I like that in a weird sort of way. Life everywhere is tough. I would say dog eat dog ...but it's more bird eat bird!

Anyway the potter must have had his money on the buzzard...as it managed to struggle free and flew off at top speed...ahhh... beautiful bird.

Excitement over..the craws and other birds settled down again up in the tops of the trees...well that is except for the seagulls who always circle overhead on the currents coming up from the Mersey which is close by. They continued to cry with their childlike "mews". Often an unearthly sound.

Years ago when the "blessed" Tom cat was in his prime, he too had taken on the magpies.

The fight was fierce, and once again all the other magpies gathered around and swooped at him as he taunted the bird in his mouth. Again, in that instance, the magpie got away and Tom made a dash for the bushes to hide until the furore was over.

Ohhh!  what an exciting life I do live!  All back to normal now...potter in studio...me at the keys and the sun starting to shine.

Can I smell spring?  I think I can.

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!

Hunter and Hunted

Once again we cycled down to the river.
The weather is on the turn now, but the Ferry area was just as calming.
The gulls were congregated on the bank opposite waiting for the incoming tide.

Why had they risen as one with such noise?

Then we spotted a lone bird hovering over the reeds.

More joined it, until there were four or five of them circling and hovering, still and menacing.

Suddenly up from the reeds came a caccophany of noise as a flock of crows rose high in the sky.

I managed to snap them as they rose.
Only later when I viewed on the Lumix site did I notice in amongst the crows a very different shape......
.......buzzards I'm told!
Nature is so many different things. We love the sense of peace that it can bring us...
.... but abhor the "red in tooth and claw". Yet one cannot be without the other.

Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote as part of the poem In Memorium A.H.H.   these lines......

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,

I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.