someone has sprinkled
crushed dried loaf on the bushes
whose crumbs the crows inspect
with much disdain incomparable
with those who are starving to death in a distant nation
these raven black birds
scrutinising with expressionless eyes
opened to the light its glassy acids,
squinting just as soon
search for moistness
to go with the crumbs
I am watching all this
my thoughts left to fend for themselves
just like messages left to set
adrift in ginger ale bottles
into the bottomless ocean
realisation hits me
it is not you who is away from me
it is me who chose this path
to be absent from you
The italized lines have been taken from poems by
Emily Dickinson
Maxine W. Kumin
Pablo Neruda
and again
Maxine W. Kumin,
12 comments:
This is incredibly beautiful. I love the way you've knit together verses from different authors.
Machine Head!
A great piece, I really enjoy the way you wove in lines from other poets in your poem. That was very clever.
We often look for someone to blame for our own (bad) choices, especially if we lose all direction in the process.
What a brilliant piece! So clever to have taken other peoples words then given them new life in a poem of yours
Very clever - and way beyond my meagre skills.
I feel a loneliness to this poem, the adding of the crows somehow makes it like the person has die and left this world by choice, I don't know why read all this in the poem
the interweaving of others' lines with your own is very effective.
Loved it. You are SO creative Gautami.
Ravens are prolly the smartest birds on the planet.
When I was a young lad working in Northern Canada our survey crew would drive to the camp garbage dump to dispose of debris...
if someone stuck a metal pipe out of the truck window the Gulls would stare blankly DUH but the Ravens 'knew' what a gun barrel looked like and they would be gone in a flash.
well done... the borrowed lines flow so smoothly
Love the second verse and how it personalizes the poem, giving it greater meaning.
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