Persistent Evening Frog

(Unspecified)

Outside our window

He sings the purest song of all

Of love, the sun and moon and stars

The world in its entirety.

Only the darkness of fulfillment or of death itself can stop him,

The faithful quest of that small heart

Beating its timelessness

Insisting to the very, truest end..

Wolf

 Down the centuries

He pads in parallel, close

But on the dark edge

Of  our consciousness 

While his renegade cousins 

Lie at home, keep watch

And never know him,

Wild, magnificent and free

Or what they have lost.

A murder of crows

A murder of crows

In their raucous assembly

Has gathered today

Their cacophony

Always ominous, may end

In judicial killing --

Its sinister power

Precisely transmitted through 

That collective noun

Manticore

A lion seems enough

To threaten in anger, red

With a scorpion tail::

But beasts of darkness

Rarely have human faces

With multiple teeth

So whence comes this one

From our deepest memories,

From the nightmare past?

Is this an image

Of ourselves retrieved from scraps 

Of hard-fought insight,

Or stemming from dreams,

Profound reflections,or

Light before new hope?

Down in the circles

Peering in the swirling night,

We can't resolve it.

The Male Capercaillie

Black knight of the woods

The jaunting dancer rampant

Flourishing his genes

The Phoenix

Pure resurrection:

Rising from the blank darkness,

Vital being aflame

Suttee for the world

Brilliant immolation

Defying the night

Time itself reverses

Look, look there ! Ashes ignite

What cannot be, is

The laws of causes

Go up in smoke, burning cold

Their words glittering .

The Night Swimmer

Waits frozen in place

As the glow  of sunset embers

Deepens into dark

Then slips quietly

Into the great pool of sky

Holds the breath of ages

Unfurls its wing-acres

Launches from the quietning

From the woods the plains the prairies

Into the waters round the world

Black Heron

To overshadow

With a dark circle of wings

And fix the waters

With a patient eye

Is a unique mystery

Passed inscrutably

The Red Phalarope

Why did the phalaropes take to swimming,

Reverse the rigid gender roles -

The showy, strutting females, the shy, diligent dowdy males?

How did the planets align for that?

 

Cloud Horses

Cloud-strewn, the sky paths

Of the cantering horses

Are muffled with starlight

Riders of the night

Silently passing over

The sleeping humans

Peryton

The human shadow

Cast by a winged stag:

Murder exorcized

Chevrotain

Across the Old World

Chevrotains! Much to teach us,

Shy, mate without fuss

Foraging at night

One precious baby to feed:

A dedicated year.

Naked Mole Rat

Age cannot wither

The rat born withered

She, queen forever

Never ages, rules

Her court in earthy darkness

Her minions waiting

Living the secrets

Of chemistry, the body

Timeless and entranced

--

The Chimera stalks

Through the forest wanderings

Weaving its tight net

Searching the darkness

Ark of our understanding 

Eternally alone

A pace so even

It freezes the timelessness

Numbs the sense of loss

Follows the echoing footsteps

Through the pool's reflection

Into the gelid humour

The closing eye of the world.

Who is the basilisk?

I, a basilisk

Composed of single mammal

Stare out at the world