26 Poems. Poem 9. Vultures thrive in Andalucian Skies

 

 

 

 

 

Vultures

My first encounter with this most alarming bird

Was from a rickshaw, bald heads gathering around a corpse

A photo taken, a memory forgotten, no remorse

Until those eyes met mine and I finally heard.

Perfectly poised to penetrate death

A holy land where human harm leaves only dog

To scavenge the remains of a very manmade mess

The vultures gone to save the sacred cows distress

Slow painful death by inner unknown toxic smog.

Perfectly poisoned by human kind

And then a vulture of a different kind arose

Above the canyons of an ancient world made new

Condors with wingspans lifting in the thermal flows

Photos to remind us that now they too are few.

Perfect flight, sight, smell to search out death

Within a classroom Africa’s vultures I undermine.

Love of a feathered mate counts the human cost

To pass exams, context, effect, unthread that line

Where one key word shouts out what has been lost.

Perfect partners raising young

Here, the vultures rise again in Spanish skies

Mostly griffon with pointed feathered wings

Black, maybe, if really large, the vulture kings

Alive, hanging on that human thread that tries.

Love protecting life

>

This poem is about my own encounters with vultures, from my early years in India, where I took many sights for granted as vultures were so common then and such perfect scavengers. In my middle years I had a wonderful trip with my daughters to Peru where we saw condors in the Colca Canyon. In my teaching years the poem Vultures by Chinua Achebe would haunt me, not because of the vultures but because of the concentration camp name which none of our students had heard of. English lessons then would become history lessons too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vultures_(poem)

Vultures are endangered and face many threats, electrocution, poisoning, loss of habitat, and in India because there was no awareness why the vulture population was dying off until the link bewtween drugs given to sacred cows was found to be lethal for vultures.

Here in our Andalucian skies we can see vultures above our house. Some may be the very endangered black vultures from the Aroche colony, or more likely the griffon vultures, which from one of the links seems to suggest there has been some conservation success because of the joint efforts of different groups and laws to protect these amazing birds.

https://www.4vultures.org/2019/01/29/a-2018-survey-of-griffon-vultures-in-andaluc%C3%ADa-reveals-the-population-continues-to-grow-across-the-region/

The poem has been constructed according to my 26 poem challenge for the conservation charity the RSPB who also support Birdlife International. There are 26 lines but the italicised lines are also 26 words in praise of the important place vultures have in nature and in human lives. The feral dogs in India that have moved in to take over the place of vultures are more dangerous to humans than vultures have ever been.

If you wish to donate to my challenge the link is below.

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/georginas-26-challenge-i-am-going-to-write-26-poems-about-the-wild-flora-and-fauna-here-on-our-woodland-finca-in-spain-i-will-post-these-on-my-blog

26 Poems for nature. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, In Deep Communion with Nature’s Spring Flowers

Here are the latest poems for my 26 poem challenge to cover 26 different species found at Navasola in Southern Spain. These particular wild flowers are now fading as their time for flowering is over and a new wave of wild spring flowers have arrived. In nature so much seems transient but all the flowers have been waiting and preparing for their moments of glory all through the year or longer. They have been in long preparation to ensure their species survive.

And so I have a rather religious or spiritual link for them all. Some inspiration comes from the candle like shapes as in Jewish tradition and symbols for the creation story and the very special day of rest.  The common names of some of the flowers  provide  links to God and the bible too. All these flowers are such incredibly evolved species in their own right and show the wonder of nature or God’s creation.

Comments on the ‘form’ of poetry I am trying to create are at the end.

 

4. Tassel Hyacinth 
You capture light with blue
Radiating calm, candles curved
Upward to a lost God
We searched for in dark places
You found in your seed’s desire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Star of Bethlehem
Each pointed point prepares
The Way from birth to Heaven
White beauty shines bright
A flower’s time is but a breath
Of hope above our Earth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Solomon’s Seal
Did all on earth agree
To learn the ways of the wise
Praise the life of Spring
With heads hung low
Close to the living earth?

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. The Wild Peony
I wrote about you once
Your wild genes, your pink beauty,
Ready to receive
So many into your pollen filled heart
There is nectar for all.

peoni broteri

 

 

 

 

 

 

8. The Palmate Anenome
Once I drew your curves
To find my hesitant lines
Gave me silent joy.
Your flower held high
By stronger forces than I could ever know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The form of these poems is a mix of haiku extended into my own 26 word form. I begin with the pattern of haiku of 17 syllables or words and then put in the extra to make up 26 words. Although short it still takes time for the poem to evolve and to be a tribute to each flower as well as any other meaning.

I have been thinking about different approaches to writing poetry and in particular as to what makes a poem and what also makes a good poem,  and when is a poem finished. I wished to go back and change some words on the last poem haiku at the end, I wanted the more evocative kiss rather than love .

How do poems make us feel something differently, a new perspective perhaps is important, a new way of looking at our world, and for me ‘The sound must echo the sense’ from TS Eliot. I like a lyrical feel but think I must try a different approach soon and some humour! Well, TS Eliot ranged from The Four Quartets to Cats.

If you wish to sponsor me in this challenge here is the link.

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/georginas-26-challenge-i-am-going-to-write-26-poems-about-the-wild-flora-and-fauna-here-on-our-woodland-finca-in-spain-i-will-post-these-on-my-blog

26 Poems. Poem 3 The Hawthorn Tree

Here is poem no 3 of my charity challenge and with thanks and links to Dverse poets that inspired my poetry path and gave knowledge of many different forms of poetry. The prompt is open link  night but will be interesting as there is the idea to share about our lives and what we may depend on in this crisis. There is also a beautiful Mary Oliver poem on their post. Their link is below.

www.dversepoets.com

This is my attempt at a haibun. A Japanese form of descriptive prose ending with a haiku. My format for my challenge is 26 lines. Please don’t count! There were 26 in pages. Word press changes too much for me when writing lines! It describes my conservation dilemmas and good fortune to be outside in our woodland home where we are both well but the sadness of others loss is real and close. Stay safe, protect your health workers and protect the natural world so much depends on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Haibun Prose  Poem In Honour of Hawthorn Trees on whose lives so much depends.

The hawthorn tree stands near our Navasola house. It is rooted within the granite rocks of a ridge along the eastern valley slopes and must be decades old, young in comparison to the century old chestnuts and olives but wild and has freely chosen its niche. I once sat beneath it, in its shade to meditate. I heard a slight fluttering and dared to leave the peace inside to look out and see a tiny mother wren and her even tinier young spaced outa along a branch. My stillness and her quietness crossed a gap. I was in her home. The hawthorn tree is a special tree for it profits many. It may defend itself with sharp thorns but for hundreds of others it protects and nourishes while it propagates itself.

Time is being spent for me between the inside and outside of this virus ridden spring. Outside I follow the wild boar paths and become like the wild bison clearing a greater space. I hope the destruction I create will make way for the more vulnerable species that need more light, or that’s my plan, like my fire plan. I clear away a lot of life in hope of more. But I always leave the young hawthorn trees that break out amid a stranglehold of bramble and undergrowth of viburnum that becomes impenetrable canopy with woven strands of sarsaparilla. Dead bramble poles still reach up surrounding their young with protective thorns. Not much can enter, not much can grow here. My desire to protect the hawthorn seems to combine some vague awareness of its fairy connections to other worlds. In fairy and folklore, I later read it is sacred and if cut down, there will be some price to pay. So much depends on a hawthorn tree. So many species.

I was scrambling up the rocky path in a tired bramble scratched frenzy and a spiky branch was in my way, in my face, on my path. I was about to chop. I stared, not recognising the blossom heavy branch, each flower packed with deep vibrant pink.

This was the first time ever I saw so close the hawthorn flower, with its anther caps on, waiting for the right time to dust the insects, blow the pollen to the wind, and then look worn out, brown and wispy thin.

Storm clouds dark spring skies

My eyes caress your burst buds

Pink lips love propose.

 

 

This link shows some close up photography of hawthorns and was the closest I got to understanding what may be happening with those sexy lipped anthers. Hawthorns are also known for herbal remedies that improve the functioning of the heart!

Hawthorn. http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artapr08/bj-hawthorn.html

The other link is for anyone who would like to sponsor me writing 26 poems for a well known nature charity, the RSPB. All charities are struggling with loss of income now so this is a small way I am encouraging myself and others to help. I also hope my poems can inspire and inform about 26 of our species here at Navasola.

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/georginas-26-challenge-i-am-going-to-write-26-poems-about-the-wild-flora-and-fauna-here-on-our-woodland-finca-in-spain-i-will-post-these-on-my-blog

26 Poems for Nature. Poem 2. The Woodmouse Mother.

The poem of William Carlos Williams that begins with ‘ So much depends’ comes sadly to my mind this week. I  discovered it first in a wonderful book called ‘ Love That Dog’ by Sharon Creech. A beautifully simple book for young and old about poetry and loss with the young boy finally being able to express happier feelings and memories of a loved dog. I have also just finished listening to Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible, a long but well worth the listen or read. ‘So much depends.’..is quoted and used by one of the characters who also becomes a poet and doctor studying disease outbreaks after growing up in the Congo. She bears witness to the struggle of ordinary people there to survive in a country being exploited by outside interests and also suffers her own tragic loss.

So much has happened within a few months that is life changing for so many and for a close friend. We will have to learn to live within an uncertain world as many already do in parts of Africa, give support to each other and ensure we look after the natural world on whose healthy state we depend.

This  poem was written about the same time as the blackbird poem and for my charity challenge of 26 poems. Each verse is 26 words! Please don’t count them. I have several times. The illustration is by another good friend and neighbour who is a a botanist, naturalist and was a conservation specialist in a previous life in Africa and many other parts of the world. Thank you to Nick Clarke for allowing me to use your drawing. Here in the Sierra there are many wood mice, with slightly larger ears than the house mouse. But similar enough if they come in the house or as some of my close friends and followers know even take a car ride.

A Wood Mouse Mother; so much depends on where you make your nest.

By Nick Clarke

You come so close to us.
You leave your trail of our
Chestnuts, quickly nibbled,
But really, yours.
As these are from your woods
Not ours.

You make your nest within our car,
Well  under the bonnet.
You leave your naked new born
Deep within the engine fold
For just a minute.

 

While you forage
Your nurtured nest has gone.
Just a space under the tree.
Will you know to wait
Within the bramble bush
For our return?

If you would like to help me sponsor the restoration of nature through the RSPB here is the link and on the previous post on the blackbird.

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/georginas-26-challenge-i-am-going-to-write-26-poems-about-the-wild-flora-and-fauna-here-on-our-woodland-finca-in-spain-i-will-post-these-on-my-blog

 

26 poems for Nature. Poem 1. Blackbird Painted in the Light of Spring

Here is the first poem of my challenge of 26 poems about the nature we see in our Navasola valley. It is about the common blackbird, Turdus merula, or Mirlo, in Spanish. A bird which sometimes perhaps we take for granted. And certainly the female is taken for granted with her duller but mottled brown plumage, but she is the one who makes the nests. Turdus, too, doesn’t seem the right word but means the family of thrushes and merle is harder to trace, meaning the blackbird but also merle can mean mottled and gives the names for Merle and Muriel.

However, to listen to their song and see them getting their daily ‘bread’ reminds me of the hymn sung as a child ‘Blackbird has spoken’, the Beatles ‘Blackbird’ and Wallace Stevens 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. Trevor’s idea was for me to do poems of 26 lines. I am also going to include poems of 26 words as I feel some brevity and levity might help too.

This poem was begun on the 26 th April when so many should have been running the London Marathon and raising money for many charities, and hence the 2.6 charity challenge. On the same day my friend the artist Ruth Koenigsberger was finishing her painting, Japanese style, of a blackbird among the blossom of a tree in her orchard. I am grateful to her for allowing me to show it with the poem.

I hope this makes a good start to my own poetry marathon. Details of the fundraising links are at the end of the post. For me I feel that although as a human species we need to nurture each other now more than ever, I am also concerned that we must have the nurturing of a much damaged natural world at the heart of our recovery. So I am supporting the conservation work of the RSPB and the International Bird Life.

Blackbird Painted in the Light of Spring

As I look out from locked down listening

To varied voices in a ‘Poisonwood’ mission,

A blackbird struts, brightening my being,

Familiar feathers focus my attention.

Once they came to our London family home

Finding fallen apples, with fieldfares too.

To find them there with so much ground to roam

Relieved despair: I ask do they still visit there?

Here, under the shade of the cork tree leaves

Among wild red peas, where grass and clover clash,

Blackbirds group together search for grubs and seeds.

Disturbed by watching eyes, to trees they dash.

Within the ivy wrangled oak, shaded in with bark black hues

Away from all those human folk, a blackbird calls

So each now knows.

Be safe, beware, find a better place,

Like deep within the thicket or the bramble bush,

Where fears are easier to face, where there is not such need to rush.

The blackbird beckons us to look anew, consider too, they have a view.

A poem and a piece of art, a valley and a hill apart

Take shape with feathery fine lines and painted plumes.

The hope of Spring within a blossoming heart.

A song, new words reach out to friends in far off rooms.

Here’s to one way of looking,

At a blackbird in pear blossom.

Beauty will be born.

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/georginas-26-challenge-i-am-going-to-write-26-poems-about-the-wild-flora-and-fauna-here-on-our-woodland-finca-in-spain-i-will-post-these-on-my-blog