KATHRYN MACDONALD

Corvidae

Will you search with me
for the thing that pulls
like the moon pulls the tide,
gravity pulls the apple to earth
from the bough of the tree,
like the salty sea pulls
the body to it?

The bird stares with eyes that search
for shiny things, his feathers blue-black,
matching hooked beak. Weaves
beer caps, lost rings, shimmering
treasures into his nest. Not a songbird
the raven croaks rougher than a frog.
Two ravens, Hugin and Munin, croak
wisdom into the ear of Odin.

I search across seas to fill the space
left by the lonely thing that echoes
through Zamfir’s pan flute,
Mouskouri’s haunting voice,
or the yearning cello of Hauser,
the unspoken thing crying to be found.
Will you search with me?

Yellow: Of Horses and Flowers

The first colour among artists 
washes the galloping horses of Lascaux 
with mating coats of yellow goethite 
incarnations to race across limestone 
grasslands of paleolithic Dordogne 
to travel across the centuries.

Carotene ‒ bold and primary ‒
permeate golden daffodils // Fluttering 
and dancing in the breeze
     van Gogh’s vases of sunflowers
     Monet’s water lilies 
the roses brushing our window-screen.
 
Their old-fashioned blossoms
slake the room with honey-scent
adrift like mist this rainy afternoon 
in early June warmed by embers
aglow in a woodstove you lit 
against the damp and chill.

The horse in our pasture wears a yellow tinge
though some may say he’s really white
but truly     when the sun shines golden 
his coat deepens to a citrine pelt 
like those yolk’d and rain-flogged roses 
turned to grief against the window-screen. 

The shaman-artists of Lascaux
and those of words and canvas     gone
as is the bush of roses beneath the windowsill
as is the man who kindled flame
but memory steals a piece of time
holds it close in caverns and in light ‒

the yellow light of falling sunshine
of embers’ lustre in a room ‒ the hue and scent
of roses in the rain. This is what is carried 
in sinew and in bone ‒ the shaman heart 
of all desire to spill enchantment far 
into the dark against the silence of alone.



quote borrowed from I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, 
William Wordsworth.