Hawk Shadow/Heroines [edit]

[dukealien]

I offer very little in critique, as there isn't much I don't like about this. The wording is a little funky, but that's it. Excellent job with the shifts, by the way. Going from reality to wondering fantasy and back to reality like you did was a great read.

Thanks for your read and good critique.  That clinches it:  Wagner is outta there (hope this smooths the read sufficiently).  Concerning "bairn," it's dialect (Scottish/North of England) and/or archaic, but I couldn't resist the alliteration - particularly plural.  And your critique rationalizes this bump, for which the edit (excision of one word) is otherwise inqdequate   .  "[W]hich women, dead, raise up" is also a little archaic, but I wanted the rhythm there and haven't thought of a better way to do it yet:  "Raise up which women" highlights an unfortunate homonym (on brooms?) and "to" messes up the rhythm no matter where it's inserted.


Edit 1

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.