Steve McAllister's Blog

I messed with the rhythm and rhyme in this poem and am now at a point where it’s closer to where I wanted it to be in the beginning.  There may be more in it, there may not.  We’ll just have to see.

In an oak of some sort at the corner of Mclintock and Garden
a screech owl sits on a hidden branch and a robin sits above him.
A south breeze remaining from a late night storm shakes the leaves of their water
and it’s enough for the owl to think it’s raining still and it shudders
the second rain from its feather shell mimicking the leaves in the south breeze. 
The two watch as I shuffle across the street crunching gravel under their tree
until I’ve passed far enough away that they think I’ll not see in the darkness
and the owl twists its head, looks to Robin, and whispers, “Watch this.”

The early morning walks are proving fruitful.  Here’s another based on observation.

A bat performs lazy eights
beneath the mercury street lamp
the orange light dimly glowing
through its tautly stretched skin.
It gorges itself in each pass
from among thousands of insects
blinded by the orange light
unaware that they’re gambling
on whether they’ll find themselves
in the flight path of the bat.

I went for a walk this morning, before sun up and after some storms had passed.  This was the result . . . this and some sweating.

In an oak of some sort at the corner of Mclintock and Garden
a screech owl sat on a hidden branch and a robin sat above him. 
A breeze shook the early morning storm water off leaves
and it was enough for the owl to think it was raining still
and shuttered away the falling water from its feather shell. 
The owl watched as I shuffled through the loose gravel
of Mclintock and Garden and passed beyond his perch,
it looked to the Robin and whispered, “Watch this.”

I have some work to do on it, of course.  I want line pairs to rhyme even if loosely, as in the first pair, and I want the meter of each line to be similar.  So I have some work to do.

I’ve looked at this several time and find myself moving words around for no good reason.  I did make a few changes that I think helps the line rhythm.  But beyond that I don’t feel I’m making significant changes.  One of the things I think I may change is the word “hummingbird” in line 10 to “wren”.  Hummingbird just seems to have too many sylables for the line.  I haven’t decided yet, though.  I’m also not real keen on the title.  So, I think I’ll set it aside for now.  I may come back to it, but that’s not been the way I normally operate.

In spacious skies,
a hawk surges,
twists and tumbles,
as though falling,
stumbling from atop
an airy ledge.
It wheels again,
harried by a
speck of darkness,
a barely discernable hummingbird
charging with abandon,
then retreating, hovering
between angry forays,
catching its breath,
maneuvering before again
charging and retreating.
A mere comma
changing the declarative
into uncertainty by
a well-placed pause.

There are some pretty significant changes in this version–mostly in weeding out the excess words.  Unfortunately, or, fortunately (as it turns out), by removing some of the excess words, I took away the metaphor that I decided wasn’t all that important or good.  You can still see a hint of it in the word “spacious.”  I also spent a bit of time fretting over the final image of the comma and I’m still not sure I’ve got it right.  At one point, I thought that I was making changes for the sake of making changes and that’s when I stopped.  Nevertheless, the reason the title of this post says “Revision 1″ is that I’m fairly confident I’ll find more to fix.

In spacious skies,
a hawk surges,
twists and tumbles,
as though falling,
stumbling from atop
an airy ledge.
It wheels again,
harried by a
speck of darkness,
a barely discernable
hummingbird charging with
abandon, then retreating,
hovering between forays,
catching its breath and
maneuvering before again
charging and retreating
in spacious skies.
A mere comma
changing the declarative
into uncertainty by
a well-placed pause.

It’s been a while since I’d posted.  I’d been doing a lot of traveling for work and, honestly, was pretty unmotivated.  I’m hoping this is the beginning of the return to writing.  There are several projects that are pending, waiting for me to get off my writing duff and do them.

This poem had been stuck in the back of my mind until this morning.  A while ago–I hesitate to guess how long–I was walking the dog when I saw a hawk really struggling to fly.  I had a hard time seeing what was causing the hawk’s struggle, but it finally became apparent.  It was a hummingbird, or at least a very small bird like a wren.  I stayed with the hummingbird because there’s not a much more diminutive and fragile bird that would have no business attacking a hawk.  So that’s the genesis of the poem.

Still, I didn’t want to write the poem as a simple recounting of what I saw.  That would be fine, but the situation seemed replete with metaphors and allegories and whatever other type of literary “trick of the book” you could imagine.  So, I jotted down a few notes and came back to it today.  I chose the short line form to add a little tension and to keep the poem moving.  There are some embedded rhymes, but I’ll freely admit they were fortuitous.  In any event, this is the first draft and I’ll come back for editing.

In crystal skies,
a hawk surges,
then twists violently
on the verge
of falling from
the airy ledge  
that sustains it.
Its direction tenuous,
Its motivation unsure,
the once comfortable
glide now strained,
soaring replaced by
struggling to maintain.
It twists again,
again and again
seemingly unable to
focus, to keep
its mind on
its eventual goal
harried by a
speck of darkness,
a barely noticeable
hummingbird charging and
retreating, stopping in
the crystal skies,
standing still to
catch its breath
before once again
charging and retreating.
A mere comma
inserting itself between
superlatives that now
seem out-of-place
and without meaning
because of the
insertion of a pause.