NaPoWriMo Day 2: Black wings

Hi,  I’m following NaPoWriMo on napowrimo.net. The challenge is to write a poem a day in April. At the moment I’m catching up as it’s day 4. So I have to post 3 today. 

This is the prompt for the April 2 poem: 

Our (optional) prompt for the asks you to write a poem about a specific place – a particular house or store or school or office. Try to incorporate concrete details, like street names, distances, the types of trees or flowers, the colour of the shirts on the people you remember there. Little details like this can really help the reader imagine not only the place, but its mood – and can take your poem to weird and wild places.

I started with the idea of my room in the morning, listening to the birds, but then I wandered off into something different.

Black wings 

Notes flying, morning breaks in cadences,
Sweeping, soft, uplifted, carried on breezes.
The red fox bobs his nose up midst long grasses,
Content to stay hidden as long as his rouse lasts.
Another hunts the smallest morsel while he sunbathes.
A blackbird winks, orange beak in stark contrast,
Adding his voice to the layers of birdsong lifting.
I pull back the net curtain to see the egg-yellow sun,
Feel its glance warming my skin, waking my eyes

From a sleep of years. Where we turn, it all turns;
Where we stop, everything falters to a standstill.
We are in-waiting, loitering between exit signs.
In corners we spy the ghosts of our distant past,
Dark and brooding, seeking to rob us of our gifts,
Rendering us incomplete, incapable of free action.
The blackbird reminds us otherwise, the Watcher,
Sending us more than his song in the emptiest times.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 4, 2020