tok tok tok --
raven tapping on the
fog filled street
originally published 22aug2020
I am taking a short break from blogging and have scheduled a few older poems to fill up the empty spaces in the interim. This haiku is a non-traditional haiku written in the style of Jon Muth, author and illustator of the a series of children books about Stillwater and Ku, Zen pandas.
my broken fingers
flint at cold fires
wet with rust & remains
rattle old the fractured stones
clacking 'round this
hollow & shattered head
a sleep of ashes
ashes & rust & rain
this cast off dross &
rusted remains
paper bark and
fine hair flutters
on the pale winds
chasing ripples
over a secret lake
For a change of pace, I decided to revisit ogam/ogham for a poetry prompt tool. As with the Elder Futhark runes, I randomly select one of the ogam fid as a prompt for a bit of micropoetry.
Because I have a poorly-developed sense of humor, the title of this post refers to a variant of the word, fid, “few”. While still in common usage, “few” is not technically accurate to describe the letter — but I like my wordplay.
Beithe (in Old Irish, beith in modern Irish) means “birch”. The fid has a number of cryptic meanings depending on the kenning or its inclusions in the medieval word lists of the filli, including: white, pheasant, livelihood, “withered foot with fine hair”, and “beauty of the eyebrow”, amongst many, many others.
I do not embrace Robert Graves’ mystical meanings as I feel they are not based in scholarship and that they disagree with people who have made a lifetime study of the ogam. While there is evidence of possible filli-coding within the letters (per the lists poets were made to memorize), there is little evidence that magical meaning was the intent and the association with magic appears to be a modern invention… But that is another post.
Perhaps I’ll eventually bring fid back and finish my in-depth exploration of their meanings.
i yield my flesh to
the carrion feast —
strip me down to bone
to scatter me to stone
and bleach me to sun
wash away my stain
for i do grow ever weary
badh touched my shoulder
as i held the remains of
old friends in a wooden box
i turned to the battle crow
as she leaned forward
laying her night beak
on my pale lips in kiss
numbing my flesh to tingle
well after i woke under
the reapers moon
all out of space
all out of time
carving the sickle moon
and dancing wrists
i slip back to stone
where blood runs thick
perhaps it is home
thrusting bare arms
into broken glass
no one needs read
these words writ
when they can be
given flow in show
and paint the floor
a crimson red
eye closed become fells
the pale and the grey
lichen and moss the taiga
blue, sage and stained
this grows home and stone
of a passing day, lost
etch me bone and twig
paint me undercloud
sway the cattails and
rain down
