Like Birds: Final Day of the Ekphrastic Challenge

This is the final day of Paul Brookes’ Ekphrastic Challenge. (The dates were a bit off.). I participated every day, and it was a challenge, but a good one. I think the art made me think in different ways and produce poems that I would not have come up with otherwise. And now, I have a group of poems to revise and perhaps put together in some format. Thank you to Paul and to all of the artists who provided their creative work for this project. You can read all about them by going to the link. Congratulations to all the other poets who participated. There was one image for today:

• 

  Christine O’Connor

Like Birds

She chants the words–
like tiny birds they fly
from her lips, the magic drips,
and she slips fever-nipped
to the riverside.

Is the reflection hers, or some other–
who might have been spirit or grandmother?
Is it past or future, what was, or what will be?
In the water, what does she see?
Stars and moon, earth and loon,
sky, earth, all upside-down,
she can’t decide

as she gazes there, unaware of time–
it seems like ages–
but only a moment has passed—
and when it’s over, she’s still not clear
what she has seen in the bits and flashes—
they collide,

the feathered-darkness and eagle-sight—
the stark gloom and the brightest light,
both appeared, both are here—
under Orion’s Belt,
they glide,

and she knelt
while the moon was rising,
now midnight blue shifts and drifts
to eastern pink, and as the wind sighs
she watches doves soar, with coo and cry,
to vanish—somewhere far, up in the sky.