The magic of stark darkness.
Did you know crows can dive like kingfishers
striking fish beneath surface of water?
Well they do…
instead of water they penetrate
the third eye in the middle
of my forehead.
Sometimes sporadically, sometimes
rapid as machinegun fire, they
explode into my brain, become
liquid steaming inspiration streaming
down a special obsidian conduit,
splashing into a cauldron of poesy
inside my capacious heart.
When full the cauldron tips
onto its side, pours contents into
a series of channels leading
to my write arm, down
into fingertips into appended
pen, then finally onto paper.
I always use black ink to honor
those magic corvids who fill me
with joy, agony, lust, laughter,
melancholy, etcetera, etcetera,
etcetera.
Also, it is not generally known
crows enjoy flying at night…
hard to distinguish black birds
against black sky…in daylight
you can see them coming;
in evening their origin is mystery…
They may not strike at all, instead
amusing each other with
skyborne acrobatics, such as
loop the loops, spinning in pairs
with talons grasping talons,
other incredible gyrations,
configurations.
They are like children ecstatic
with playing, ignoring
mother’s cries it is time
to come home. They may
stay up there all night long,
into morning, even through
the day, only exploding into
human thought when
they are damn well ready.
The cauldron aches empty
while they stall…hard to
wait them out, there is no
other choice; they won’t
be coaxed.
What an incredible rush it is when
they start to strike third eye again,
an orgasm of soul, cacophony
of cawing reverberating to
finally echo in written words.
I always use black ink.
~ Wry Welwood,
3rd of November 2021.
In response to Scrittura’s Wednesday prompt: what magic would you use,
in the context of November Corvid Month.
(It’s not a prose poem, but the crows have minds of their own.)
“During the 7th century CE, an Irish fili or sacred poet composed a poem on one of the mysteries of the Irish wisdom tradition. This poem is preserved in a 16th century manuscript 1, along with the glosses in 11th century language explaining some of its more obscure references. When it was finally “discovered” by modern scholars, it was named “The Cauldron of Poesy” for its references to poetry being created in three internal cauldrons.”
ObsidianMagazine.com
attention: J.D. Harms.