Reasons to live

There is a blessing in the morning silence,
That moment just before the awakening,
A solitude of expectations for beginning,
The day holds its pregnant breath waiting,
A thin light peaks beneath the dark,
As if to shove aside the dreams of night,
It is an invitation opening the soul’s door,
A corporeal alarm for all creatures to arise,
The birds gentle chirping natures wind chimes,
Rustling frantic fall leaves answer,
In the distance a cock beckons his flock,
Gaia moves, shouldering a frosty blanket,
We are all one, the one is in all,
It awakes from slumber with the dawn,
Offering a cascade of possibilities,
Possibilities for today, tomorrow, forever,
Inhale its fragrance, acknowledge its power,
Consume this gift of time and live.

©2019, Donald Harbour

Fallen sparrow

A small sparrow fell out of the sky today,
I held it in the palm of my hand,
Until it was well enough to fly away.

©2015, Donald Harbour

Winter long flying bird

The hawk of winter is sinking
its talons into the soul of earth,
bitter grievous dark beacon of
the long sleep, long flying bird
that beckons the forgiveness of spring,
it cannot wait its task for it blankets
this night with the howl of its song
and the moulting of its cold cold feathers,
perched upon the dead and fallow ground
there is hope in the birth it nurtures,
a blessing in the sacrifice to destiny,
it will not nest forever but for the morrow,
cast back to its northern clime
duty bound to leave us when the sun
awakens from its southern sojourn
with a heated nod shooing that pesky bird.

©2014, Donald Harbour

Dali got it right

Last night I happily dreamed,
Our world’s ship turned upside down,
Giant oaks hung suspended in the air,
While birds flew on the ground.

Air was not polluted for breath,
All water pure for drinking too,
The earth’s creatures took photographs,
Of caged humans in their public zoo.

It was a world of imaginations,
Where peace reigned supreme,
Where guns were licorice sticks,
And oil was frothy whipped cream.

Blue skies were always overhead,
Rivers and lakes placidly flowed,
Fish were scaled in sparkling diamonds,
Multicolored butterflies paved each road.

Cows were made for milk and mooing,
Chickens cheerfully clucked a chicken song,
Lions laid beside fluffy white lambs,
No one ever heard the words: “This is wrong!”

There were no gods or seraph,
No torture or misguided religious grief,
No war mongers, government or politicians,
Pontificating their bellicose belief.

Pink peddle-pushers road horseback,
Through fields of limeade green,
Not found were homeless without homes,
Unbranded tennis shoes were only seen.

Dali was captain of this wondrous ship,
Sailing over the sea of cosmic space,
The passengers of his whimsical bark,
Different hues of the same human race.

Dawn pulled me from the dream,
It whispered a new beginning had begun,
Startled I realized in a jolt of epiphany,
All of us, could make this year, the one.

©2014, Donald Harbour

A Greek tragedy

The honey red heifer is birthing,
a difficult calving under monstrous
roiling dark bellied storm clouds,

She has chosen to offer up her gift,
under a twisted, gnarled, ancient tree ,
the only old guardian of the pastures.

She bellows not understanding it is necessary.
In the midst of her agony the Hyades
conspire to muffle her wild-eyed complaints.

The bowels of the fields are bulging,
constipated with swollen verdant seeds,
anticipating an elixir from above.

These grassy tarns of seasonal
vivacity will explode, grasping
the pastures fertile beckoning thighs,

a rapturous rupture of the soil, an
orgasm of awakening to satisfy
the heavenly rain spiked thrusts.

In the midst of April’s tribulation
a nocturnal nuisance has arrived,
raucous, unyielding in its annoyance.

Somewhere in the fence hedge, above
natures pious conversation, piercing
the vernal bacchanal of the night,

a feathered creature speaks in
full tenor timbre, Pavarotti incarnate,
it choruses the drama of this Greek

tragedy, played out in the amphitheater
of creation. Will there be life, or, the
tearful damning gloom of death.

Thor’s mighty hammer dispels
the Stygian darkness with crackling
light, a proctor quieting the class.

With a pause, sweet as the kiss of dew,
there is a gasp of all the calamity.
Mother Nature gathers her children, watching.

Life has arrived in a wet gelatinous
blanket, loved with soft brown eyes
and a lick for the first calf of spring.

©2014, Donald Harbour

What makes her so

She approached, softly,
a pink flamingo perched
upon a frozen lake, each step
a fluid motion creating
a sensual languid moment,
the tableau hers alone,
time stopped to watch,
oceans ceased movement,
the air held its breath,
she is the whisper of mist,
lilac scented crystal dew,
a lover’s passionate sigh,
the space she occupies, a
captivating sacred temple,
where others fail, what
makes a woman so, what
magic does she possess,
in a field of weeds,
she is that one blossom
standing alone, rising
above the common grass,
her entrance silences a room,
it is not beauty, it is grace,
that indefinable essence of a woman.

©2014, Donald Harbour

The bite of winter

The season’s dog has clamped its jaws,
biting deep into my warm, moist flesh.
It’s bark turning the sky dispiriting grey
as a canopy of death, an ash urn turned
upside down clutching at the life below
with corpse cold fingers. The birds
refuse to fly, those that do soon drop
from heaven, feathered chunks of ice.
To breathe is to inhale shards of glass,
each breath a searing arctic surgery.
The air is still, cloying, a suffocating chill.
Frigidness permeates every pore in the body
making hands useless, hammer struck fingers
ache dangling off reddened fleshy paws.
The end of the year brings the burden
of survival to all creatures; except
those frozen in stillness, burrowed deep in
the earth never knowing the suffering above,
sleeping to awaken when spring triumphs,
banishing old man Winter to his northern realm.

©2013, Donald Harbour

Joyful madness

Potence has overtaken the dawn sky,
a mystical wakefulness in the scene,
a swirling mass of screeching devils,
choreographed jockeying for position.
They are grains of sand in the cosmos,
autumn’s winged disciple vagrant voyagers ,
These calamitous irreverent starlings,
gathering each year for millennium,
a convention of chirping auctioneers,
selling the season to winter’s chill.
Their movement paint on a Van Gogh canvas,
soon one will take command, a leader,
thousands will follow in joyful madness.
There will be evidence of their passing,
tree branches littered with white refuse,
then the tranquility of grateful silence.
I am transfixed by them and I wonder,
did humankind evolve from starlings?

©2013 Donald Harbour

A birds nest tale

In the backyard, with indifferent abandon,
a holly bush leans against the fence.
An invitation that will be taken.

Within the protective dense thorny green foliage,
mom and dad Cardinal make a twig home.
Soon peeps announce a new families hatch.

Foraging with industry the male and female
endlessly fly to the yard garden grocery store.
The tomato horned worms do not survive.

It is an organic garden relying on benevolent help
from these talon red feathered creatures and good bugs.
Ravenous chicks doom the plant destroying worms.

A peek in the nest reveals two fluffy hungry babes
their open yellow rimmed beaks pointed skyward.
They are ravenous to any rustle of the branches.

Flashing dazzling colors, song birds dart about,
one of the benefits of planting a harvest of veggies.
Everyone benefits the bounty; birds and neighbors.

The family dogs seem to sense their unspoken duty
protectively lying in the shade beneath the nest branch.
Coming inside at nightfall they give up their guard watch.

Night darkness can become the indiscriminate evil hour for life,
when dark hides the skulking casual destroyers of homes.
The time of burglars, murders, the devils spawn, feral cats.

One of the neighbors daily feeds these treacherous felines,
in sympathy for their dispassionate wild primitive existence.
The cats have no morals, only a taste for baby birds.

©2013 Donald Harbour

Cartwheeling through the air

A flash against the azure hue,
I watch and marvel at the sight,
I watch and thrill at the arc
of each arrow perfect flight.
Spiraling to challenge clouds,
a skilled agile shining corsair,
an aerial performing acrobat,
cartwheeling through the air.
I wish that I were born different,
I wish that I could take flight too,
then I could have the fanciful fun,
as my feathered friend Grackles do.

©2013, Donald Harbour