Chochín

The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,

St. Stephen’s Day was caught in the furze

The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves

It is time for games–I choose opacity over transparency. It is time for the hunting of the wren.

A living wren tied, knocked to stillness but still alive, tied to a stick and paraded for coins or other trinkets. An inexorable crush. A place between what one is and what one is supposed to be.

she/must learn not to subdue the fear

I am hiding this post in broad daylight. Or, more accurately, night. Good night. With enormous moon winged in flight…

or some such thing.

you are becoming gone

Sometimes I wish I too was dead inside. My depressions come in raging and furious and violent with sensation.

I see that I’m running a fever
I see that I’m afraid

One upon a time

The world’s carbon emissions increased by 5.9% in a single year

One upon a time

The permafrost started to melt and up came gases,methane, carbon dioxide. The gases emerged dancing delighted by their newfound freedom and hugged the globe hugged the heat of the sun tightly.

It is love

Once a fear pierced him

the shadow

Once upon a time

18 years or 20 years of a life, on a single day, with typescript and a handful of dollars, shut the door on itself.

I am become

Now that my ladder’s gone

I imagine that when I am an old woman, if I get to that place–and sometimes I do in my mind

mountains; cliffs of fall

I’ll be alone. There are things we settle into in life and then they are over and we turn back, surprised, because we’d thought we were something other.

I grow backward

Now she’s done for

It is hard going to the door

I have written too much. I have been too transparent

cut so small in the wall where

the vision which echoes loneliness

The Bewick’s have visited me from the cold brush–do I think on them more because the hunt is on my mind? Or is it that they are more present right now, they and our thrushlike robins, in great flocks. The leaves have left space for me to see.

Oer his white banes, whan they are bare,

It will soon be time for the hunt.

The wind sall blaw for evermair

Bewick’s are safe from sticks or, at least, they aren’t the targets of Lá Fhéile Stiofán. Whatever the betrayal I do not believe the wren played a part. Nor do I believe the knife sticking out of your back is sent there by the hand of our now rising king.

should she smother it?

The wrens know what I am tending. My little seedling, I’m tending it as though it might, some day, yield an ear of corn, a piece of bitter fruit

I must lie down where all the ladders start

blossoms rank as breath

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Quotes are by

Kashock, Christensen, Keats, Yeats, Stevens, Creeley, Plath

Soundtrack (for those on spotify) is at SPOTIFY