Spotted Nutcrackers
By onemorething
- 769 reads
Nutcrackers are sowing forests
from pregnant cones
in an evolution of love,
conical beaks shepherd
new woods up mountainsides,
their own eggs cracked
from lichen-lined nests in larches.
The young are tended and taught
how to take the barred spiral
of toughened scales to unfurl
a galaxy on Ural ridges,
shown the nature of time
and how to defeat it
in the way that snowfall slows
and softens over the ground.
Pine trees grow in regiments,
earth blooded, violet bloomed
beneath the songs of breaking branch
and wingbeat, and men complain
that they have been unmanned,
goddesses protest at their unworship:
life being a succession of planted seeds
to nurture an inevitability of grief.
Here was Attis, born from a pomegranate
held to his mother's breast -
until the loggers came,
the waft of sap, acidic,
mourned by these spotted birds.
Image is from wikimedia commons: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nucifraga_caryocatactes_Davos_1.jpg
Also on Twitter, this beautiful painting:
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Shishkin#/media/File%
- Log in to post comments
Comments
A special poem of the beauty
A special poem of the beauty of nature written with love.
Jenny.
- Log in to post comments
Your knowledge of ornithology
Your knowledge of ornithology is impressive, Rachel. Mine is practically non-existent as I cannot even differentiate between a tree sparrow and a house sparrow. I can hold my own on mythology though and seem to remember having read that Attis's mother got pregnant by holding an almond to her breast. Different source, perhaps.
I like your reference to 'planted seed' and 'the inevitability of grief' especially bearing in mind the fate that befell the poor guy.
Always a pleasure to read your work.
Luigi x
- Log in to post comments