fallslikesnow

1. " The secret of the lapwing is, disguise the secret. " (Robert Graves, The White Goddess) 2. The Lapwing is hopping across the grass Its play of a broken wing convincing all critics And attracting them away from the nest. 3. Small black eyes peering out of the hedgerow Constant patrols to secure the perimeter Lacking any defensive capability beyond the wing trick The Lapwing scans the sky for signs of hope 4. We will summon all of our resources And those of our allies Spy satellites the size of pickups Will gently rotate and re-focus  Ballistic, sub-orbital Spy planes will fly overhead taking 10,000 pictures a second Glittering machines The size and shape of spiders Will skitter through the hedgerow Looking for the nest 5. To be the first to fly across the field of broken bones And see the roadway of shards the dead will walk upon To fly across, along, up 6. Against a sky that looks as though The blue were matte paint Hastily slapped on the...

A piece of magic, a faked broken wing It's love, pure. simple, a sight that lingers Sentimentality aside, how could This be anything but a mothers love To pull along on a leash of weakness The predator, a task that's endless Again sentimental, but no surprise There, where success is achieved by lies "Hide the Secret" is such a human trait When the opposition force is too great To distract, to hide, to make things appear Other than they are, learn to make a tear In the way things are, and slip through a wing Save the young, pull a fast one on the thromg Of those who would hurt you or your young, but How could evolution, blind, cause such love The slow grind of mechanistic forces? Or a benevolent creators courses? We should know by now that often love is A blind mechanistic force, a habit, has No purpose beyond its own selfish needs And a creator had best stick to seeds The fifteenth way of looking at a Lapwing is for a gene to go and ...

Augury is the art of telling fortunes by watching the flight of birds The Lapwings' flight always tells of the same future A future of great peril and unselfish sacrifice This prediction is always correct

I once had a world in box Speckled blue, the size of your fist Resting on aromatic wood shavings I can smell them now as I sit in my dark cell I smashed it, I was only a child I dropped it from a top floor window It shattered and out came a drab brown bird It flew high, then higher then disappeared We all get one world and every world gets a bird To warn other birds of a new predator To be lured away from the speckled blue eggs

These are the jokes - An Interlude A Lapwing went to heaven It was full of foxes The Lapwing confused them all with graceful pirouettes on its' "good" wing and million mile an hour loops No eggs were lost Ever When NASA decided to send a Lapwing to the Space Station they sent no eggs. The Lapwing adopted some spider eggs instead. It learned to loop and gyre in micro-gravity, teaching the baby spiders to spin the strange webs they spin in space. It tried to lure away the bits of cosmic radiation always hammering through the station. At this it was 100% successful. Unfortunately the scientists weren't watching. The spiders grew up happy, well-adjusted and expert web makers birdscreamingland would be prime real estate if it weren't for all the needles All Lapwings have subscriptions to People magazine. It makes excellent nesting material.

Across the causeway Into the castle Castle Perilous Fifteen entered How many left? None left but one I could see the sparks rising in a fountain of speckled light The old man's eyes black through the fire Across the causeway Under the ground Castle Perilous Eleven entered How many left? None left but one I could see the stars spinning, a sprinkling of snow Against soft black felt. I remained silent Across the causeway Into the air Castle Perilous Seven entered None left but one But the six flew higher Slipped along fault lines of sky Saw the benevolent grinding Of the millers stone And only wanted to be chaff To be blown away And to fly higher And the one that was left Each time she fell With a broken wing What was her name? I took my right hand cupped Whispered a name into it Made a holding fist Threw the word across the fire Into his chest He grunted and fell back slightly The smiled and across the fire Threw the small sack from around his neck I opened the bag and Gently spilled...

The bird skims across the water like a skipping stone Pursued by a snarl shaped like a fox.

The meadow, blades of grass A landscape of soil, ripe and scalloped by the rain Steamy loam ready to take to a different kind of nest Suddenly a wall of feathers descends Huge and brown, iridescent, each brown drab feather Somehow rippling deeply with colour A light bomb exploding with colour like a tropical sunset The wing scrapes overhead and is gone

The evidence of age, the skimming black dots In the land of screaming birds each dot is a bird with Wings sewn together over its back, eyes pierced with Needles, legs broken in multiple places They fall forever Each a Lapwing who lost her nest

In the land of screaming birds space is only direction, not distance Time is stretched to an endless glowing moment There are no clouds, just a blue mist Overlain with the patina of infinity That mortal eyes never see The delicate white crackling, the evidence of vast age Black dots skim across

Against a sky that looks as though The blue were matte paint Hastily slapped on the heavens The Lapwing cuts lines and curves, Tying the sky together with grace.

To be the first to fly across the field of broken bones And see the roadway of shards the dead will walk upon To fly across, along, up

We will summon all of our resources And those of our allies Spy satellites the size of pickups Will gently rotate and re-focus Ballistic, sub-orbital Spy planes will fly overhead taking 10,000 pictures a second Glittering machines The size and shape of spiders Will skitter through the hedgerow Looking for the nest

Small black eyes peering out of the hedgerow Constant patrols to secure the perimeter Lacking any defensive capability beyond the wing trick The Lapwing scans the sky for signs of hope

The Lapwing is hopping across the grass Its play of a broken wing convincing all critics And attracting them away from the nest.

"The secret of the lapwing is, hide the secret." (Robert Graves, The White Goddess)