Forest Bird

© Steve King

All rights reserved

A forest bird lost its way

from the cool shade of its wood,

skimming across my clearing,

it glided in bright vision,

at the window where I stood—

where it saw itself to be,

finding itself, finally.

And so, inevitable:

that moment of gathered life

when unwinding fates are met,

and all futures come to pass:

griefs and gladness and regret.

Then, nothing:  it lay so still,

small beneath the window glass.

I watched from shadow within,

quiet beauty pictured so:

gone the song and stilled the flight,

as all beauty we may know;

muted accents clinging fast

to that vestige of delight.

Sweet vestige that must outlast

forest birds lost in the light.


A new poem for the Poetry Pantry
http://poetryblogroll.blogspot.com/

Emptiness

©  Steve King

All rights reserved

I have taken all I could from emptiness—

have suffered old desires to breach anew

and fill the fast expanding space;

have stumbled through each blindness,

all wit and happenstance,

and called on shadows there to resonate

through courses of new moods,

though softly as a wish might ever be.

I have given all I could to emptiness—

have tried to see across to latter ends,

feeling for small ripples of discontinuity

in smooth inviting fabric that surrounds,

in silence that would mock all reverence,

and smother each small echo,

even of a beating heart.

I have savored what I might in emptiness,

conjuring imagined sounds

to sing me what in emptiness

may anytime be found;

though everywhere beyond,

I know cacophony abounds.

I have settled into emptiness,

not a passive tenant of the void,

nor an idle roomer,

safe, as it would seem, with small comforts;

but as must every restive creature be

when flung by unrelenting tides

to the embrace of unsought shores,

close within its frail shell,

listening for each faint note,

and longing, as it waits, for some far sea.

A new poem for the Poetry Pantry

http://poetryblogroll.blogspot.com/