crow

Day One #napowrimo (the prompt was a book title)

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

Practical Taxidermy

Here I am
strapped to a frame,
a never changing armature
holds me in its tight grip,
preserved in formaldehyde,
polished and preened,
displayed on a shelf
under a spotlight
my guts torn out
and burned on the fire.
My skin is so cold.

How is this me?
Where are my entrails,
my being,
my soul.

The eyes remain dead,
despite all their efforts
to keep the light twinkling in glass.
It’s not me.

Why preserve a thing so lacking in spirit?
They should have installed me
inside a badger,
a crow or a fox.

© A.Chakir 2023

Upstart Crow

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

By the Avon, there was one,
always known as Stratford son,
who summed the world with liquid tongue.
Wisdom spilled and warmth of wit
keep his words forever young.
The paths he walked today are thronged
by wandering tourists, curious still,
about the story of our Will.

Above his grave,
pointing upward to the sky,
the shadows on the ancient spire
are swept by sunlight after clouds.

I said a prayer to please his soul
and left a sprig of rosemary.

By the river, under trees
through the graves, row on row,
I smiled to see an ‘upstart crow’
sauntering with dignity.

 

upstart crow cut

The Death of my Blood

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

 

I died out on these moors, my bones are here.

I feel them in the pooled reflections in mud,

the wind in the bare gorse and the crows’ flight.

 

Later, in the mines, under weight of rock

darkness enfolded around me. No hope.

I knew I would die when the lamp guttered out.

 

The next time I was spared the mines labour.

Instead they sent me off to their war in France.

No grave when a shell blows flesh apart.

 

Many times I have died at my fireside.

I once burned in  flames for heresy.

Never have I died in the sea.

 

The death I would wish for is the pure one

with the mist and the crow on the moor,

to rest in my own land forever at home