10-12-2016, 10:16 PM
Hawk Shadow/Heroines
Late Sunday morning biking west
I noticed that my shadow had grown wings
not massive pinions, smaller ones
like a parrot’s on my pirate shoulder
or (they moved around)
winged helmet of a Valkyrie ~
Male Valkyries -
what slain would they choose,
which women, dead, raise up
in strong, impassioned but unforcing arms?
Perhaps those heroines who die
in single combat pitting mother and her child
against the closing circle,
to bear and to be born?
Their man-formed Valkyrie would lift them up
not to eternal roistering
but tea and calm conversations
with others who had died in childbirth
and sweet spirits of their stillborn bairns
meeting, too, those born alive
they never lived to greet.
~ the shadow bird kept pace.
I never turned to look:
he’d have been hidden in the sun
as my lazily pursuing hawk
meant it to be.
Late Sunday morning biking west
I noticed that my shadow had grown wings
not massive pinions, smaller ones
like a parrot’s on my pirate shoulder
or (they moved around)
winged helmet of a Valkyrie ~
Male Valkyries -
what slain would they choose,
which women, dead, raise up
in strong, impassioned but unforcing arms?
Perhaps those heroines who die
in single combat pitting mother and her child
against the closing circle,
to bear and to be born?
Their man-formed Valkyrie would lift them up
not to eternal roistering
but tea and calm conversations
with others who had died in childbirth
and sweet spirits of their stillborn bairns
meeting, too, those born alive
they never lived to greet.
~ the shadow bird kept pace.
I never turned to look:
he’d have been hidden in the sun
as my lazily pursuing hawk
meant it to be.
Non-practicing atheist