*This poem was inspired by a poem of Percy Shelley’s in a letter to Maria Gisborne concerning the Engish Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Hooded Hawks, Blinking Owls (12.29.19)
Flustering flights naught savored
Wasted, without satiation, nor flavor
Damp lips whistling sanguine sounds
Grammar cadencing unpunctually around
Words writhing round huffs of Air
Straining, aching, towards Nowhere
Hooded hawks raking writhing snakes
Blinking owls wordlessly opaque
Broad chests, feathered and stoic
Fettered by bents unheroic
Hazard not nigh, talons unmoved
Heads revolving for Egos un-soothed
Noble eyes, veiled, eager for Light
Shackled only to Creator’s Might
Peril proximate, throbbing to Fly
Imperiling all to be drawn Nigh
I’d rather be sightless, poised for Release
Risking finite prices to be at Peace
Foolish and bias, pious and jestering
Letting souls not fester under this sequestering
May All be free under this Nature
A Meadow, canvassed by Maker
Suspend hubris; collapse into flow of Time
And glimpse a Newness—an image of that is Divine.
