Kingfisher
FinsburyParkCarrots
Posts: 12,223
I move through Hobson's Brook in my waders, with my fork
angled down in a fast jut-thrust.
I lift out a cake of green cress
up and out from the mud, and I love the suck it makes
and the feel of the weight on the metal
and the way the water jets through the prongs
escaping back noisy, sploshing back into the stream.
I flick the fork into the air from the elbows,
How Dad showed me, and three stones of cress fire up
over my head ... wheeeee ..... to land on the top of the bank
five feet away. It's great to keep repeating this, keep repeating this,
moving my rubber-booted feet through friendly sludge,
watching the deeps always near a tree coming from the verge,
with the spring sun spying proudly through willow fronds
and lighting the sound of a splosh in my busying mind.
And oh, the voles and moorhens and the drakes love to see the river clear:
they bomb past me merrily, their little bottoms nuzzling into new terrain;
a grasssnake whips between my booted calves in the roll downstream,
and if it could say "Excuse me there, kind fella", you know, I think it would.
But what makes me stop and watch and listen
Right now
in the boughs of that cypress
just there
is
that kingfisher
its little heart beating
in a shiny orange breast
its jacket blue
its beak grinning
its toes curled
its eyes on me
gosh
even the water stills now...
Hey, kingfisher...
What would you like me to do
with the river?
angled down in a fast jut-thrust.
I lift out a cake of green cress
up and out from the mud, and I love the suck it makes
and the feel of the weight on the metal
and the way the water jets through the prongs
escaping back noisy, sploshing back into the stream.
I flick the fork into the air from the elbows,
How Dad showed me, and three stones of cress fire up
over my head ... wheeeee ..... to land on the top of the bank
five feet away. It's great to keep repeating this, keep repeating this,
moving my rubber-booted feet through friendly sludge,
watching the deeps always near a tree coming from the verge,
with the spring sun spying proudly through willow fronds
and lighting the sound of a splosh in my busying mind.
And oh, the voles and moorhens and the drakes love to see the river clear:
they bomb past me merrily, their little bottoms nuzzling into new terrain;
a grasssnake whips between my booted calves in the roll downstream,
and if it could say "Excuse me there, kind fella", you know, I think it would.
But what makes me stop and watch and listen
Right now
in the boughs of that cypress
just there
is
that kingfisher
its little heart beating
in a shiny orange breast
its jacket blue
its beak grinning
its toes curled
its eyes on me
gosh
even the water stills now...
Hey, kingfisher...
What would you like me to do
with the river?
Post edited by Unknown User on
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like honest magpies,
they mean joy, for sure,
their headfirst trajectories
figure eights, elliptical orbits,
gliding, dipping,
rising, zipping into poplars,
popping out fast
against this
light blue
Cambridge
afternoon.
Joy in twos.
In silent energy from Precambrian ages
Historical imprints on time-layered mud banks
Chronicles Pangaea’s current
Absorbing all pre-moments
To become this silent instance of grandeur
Today!
You!
Are part of it’s history
It’s life, it’s future, it’s flow….
Now! Go! paddle down and see what’s at the end!