a good omen

_ _ _

band of seagulls

"The deeper sorrow carves into your being,

the more joy you can contain."

— Khalil Gibran

For what it is

A kit of pigeons swirl

through the dense knotted limbs
of benumbed frost-bitten trees
black and bare to my blind eye

I see a dozen flapping wings 

 that thrust against the clasp of winter,

hear crisp-clear whips of sails at sea

midst fierce gusts of arctic wind —
emphatic flight for higher ground;
a silver cloud moored on the roof,
a reverie perhaps, immersed?
.

for what it is, is that, which isn't
and what is sought is seldom seen
or grasped in the moment,
but missed, and missed

(composite after J.M.W. Turner)

"The Stranger Stumbles on Himself in the Stranger" (Mahmoud Darwish)

We are one in two /

There’s no name for us, woman, when the stranger

stumbles upon himself in the stranger. Of our
garden behind us we have the force of shadow. So slow
what you want of your night's land, and conceal
what you want. We came in a hurry from the twilight
of two places at one time, and searched together
for our addresses: Go behind your shadow,

east of the Song of Songs, a shepherd of sand grouse,

you’ll find a star dwelling in its death, then climb a neglected

mountain and you’ll find my yesterday completing its cycle in my

tomorrow.

You’ll find where we were and where we’ll be together,

we are one in two /

Go to the sea then, man, west of your book,
and dive lightly, lightly as if you were carrying
yourself at birth in two waves,
you'll find a forest of water grass and a green sky
of water, then dive lightly
lightly as if you were nothing in anything,
and you will find us together . . . 
we are one in two /
We need to see how we were here, you
stranger, as two shadows opening and closing on what
has been shaped of our shape: a body disappearing then reappearing
in a body disappearing in the mystery of the eternal
duality. We need to return to being two
to embrace each other more. There is no name for us, woman,
when the stranger stumbles upon himself in the stranger!

― Mahmoud Darwish, from The Butterfly's Burden

tr. by Fady Joudah

Restless depths

Unravelling pattern

"If you go as far as you can see, you will then see enough to go even farther."

― John Wooden

Out of the daylong fog

Gazing at their wings

"For there’s a limit to gazing. 

And the gazed-at world 

Wants to blossom in love." 

— Rainer Maria Rilke, Turn of the Road

Thought in a bone

Feather 

[next] to bare stone

brave thought in a bone

words on the outskirts

of what once they stood for.

Beneath my rubber boot

— squelching mud

decks the barren ocean floor —

slow bleeding the unspoken

or perhaps it's spectral 

connotation.

Seagulls

"In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence." — Robert Lynd

Crows

Fractal [e]scapes ― The Series

Fractal [e]scapes XIII ― Stone of Heart

Unbearably lightweight

Swallows

When love goes silent, it is a deafening sound ―
that chases the swallows away.

Before the rain

Blue jay

                                            Cloud of blue, fair wings

                                             on a slanted horizon ―

                                             a dream in motion.

"a spiral celebration"

"on the kitchen wall a flash
of shadow:
swift pilgrimage

of pigeons, a spiral

celebration of air, of sky-deserts."

- Denise Levertov

mid-afternoon seagulls

starling murmurations over boundary bay

"starling flocks, it turns out, are best described with equations of "critical transitions" —
systems that are poised to tip, to be almost instantly and completely transformed, like metals 
becoming magnetized or liquid turning to gas. each starling in a flock is connected to every
other. when a flock turns in unison, it’s a phase transition. . . .

but what physiological mechanisms allow it to happen almost simultaneously in two birds
separated by hundreds of feet and hundreds of other birds? that remains to be discovered" . . .

_ _ _

                                                       startling!