Poetry Challenge. PoeM 24 : The Black Kite

Milvana by Ruth Konigsberger

As many of you will know I am trying to finish this 26 poetry challenge I started during our Spanish lockdown experience. We are currently entering back into that phase here in the North of the UK and I still have three poems to go. However, we have managed to spend time with Jessica Rose, our new arrival and focus of my last post. All is going well.

This poem is forDverse poets open link night, always a source of inspiration and able to kick start me. http://www.dversepoets.com

This poem is about the very successful and world wide species of black kites. The drawing is by Ruth Konisgsberger and is part of the portrait of the character of the black kite in my novel. I will do a post on this as soon as I finish these poems! Black kites do visit the Sierra on their migration, some breed here. However, nowadays the red kites seem more common.

The Migrating Kites ( Milvus migrans or Milano negro in Spanish)

Our Milvana migrates from here,

Here to somewhere over there,

Over the deserts to Afri Ka.

All kinds of kites have flown

All around the world wide web,

Connected by genes from ancient

Almost Jurassic dinosaur times.

Archaeopteryx, the mother bird

First flew the world.

Black kites, by many other names

Milano, Milhafre

Live long lives of 20 years or so

With brains that may adapt

To many different climes.

Some flew over wide waters                                                                                                     

To islands in the vast Atlantic

To the Azores.

Some flew to Gondawa

And learnt how

To use burning branches

To flush out scared prey.

Before wild fires spread so fast

To destroy whole forests,

In changing times

With wildlife crimes.

Others in the East

Fly around the temples

Of the many headed Gods

Brahmin souls in flight

Pariahs picking the bones

Of the dead.

Here in the Sierra

Not many black kites

Now fly.

Does anyone care

Why?

Wishing everyone a safe and purposeful time in such a difficult era.

For anyone wishing to sponsor the poems I will put up some new links for the charity Birdlife International who coordinate the conservation of birds across our human borders.

A poem for Peony: The Wild Peony Forest; cycle of change from March to May, paeonia broterii,

Dverse poets have suggested a prompt based on ecopoetry. Do check out this inspirational poetry group at  Dverse  . The poetry bar is open and serving up so many different ideas most of the week. Ecopoetry seems to be a different term being introduced by groups such as Green Spirit and Resurgence. Alice Oswald is also mentioned and I find her a fascinating poet who has such an observant style that also brings out deep emotions. I’m not sure I want my own writing to be put into a category and I had never come across this term before but I certainly seem to be focused on my own and others relationship with the natural world at this point in time.

Trevor organised a nature course here some years ago and it was led by the botanist Teresa Farino. This started my inquiry into the plant kingdom. I was also given a mother’s day present of the Alice Oswald anthology, Weeds and Wild Flowers.  I loved the Snowdrop one ,’ A pale and pining girl,head bowed, heart gnawed’ ……. ‘ her wildflower sense of wounded gentleness’

I wrote this poem early on in blogging inspired by the wild peonies here at Navasola and in the Sierra Aracena. It is January 2016 now but on our return from our special birthday trip to the Azores within 10 days there have been changes. The invasive mimosa is out in its bright yellow headdress, the almond blossom is delicately feeling for the early bees, and the peonies are beginning to thrust through the cold ground. Some are near paths so I stick sticks around them so we don’t forget and tread on these wild sisters of the many cultivated ones.

 

A Poem for Peony and all those wild loving sisters

Ms Peony Broterii

Wild genes live dangerously

Not cultivated carefully

Like your gardened sisters.

But your barb is in your poisonous roots,

Anchored, aching deep in chestnut groves,

In the shade of veteran friends, long standing,

Bringing you your strength, uprightness, roots rooted.

Unlike the myriads of visitors ready to be satiated

In your open sensuous bloom.

Bringing a light touch on velvet petal,

A rubbing of stamens, a staining of pollen,

Buzzing bodies beating,

Intoxicated with your nectar.

They stay only for their own satisfaction.

You may have some regrets, a sense of loss

As petals fall and breezes betray your beauty.

But your thrill is in your seed pod,

Ready to ripen, always ready,

To begin again, always hopeful

To survive into another Spring.

Only the danger of the human mind
Can threaten you.

Georgina Wright

 

 

Mid May, seed pod, ripening and hopefully fully fertilised by an amazing range of insects that have loved being inside this peony!

Part of peony forest in full bloom – April to May

Early May

Pollination, fully open to the sun and all insects!

The first Peony bloom in Navasola East, by an old chestnut, attracting insects. April.

Wild peony forest –  Early March.

Peony Plot in Kew gardens.
Over 30 different types of peonies and now reclassified!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to Dverse   For the ecopoetry prompt  January 2016

With thanks to the poems by
Alice Oswald, Weeds and Wild Flowers ( Faber and Faber ) and to the peonies and photos taken at Navasola among the ancient chestnut trees.

Originally written in 2013 and posted then.