Poetry

Halcyon

It can't be that only the righteous see them.
We count six strung out on a twelve mile stretch.
Each orange-blue lucifer
sparks the trout brown river, the dipping trees.
They weave invisible skeins
from bank to bank,
mark their domain with piping calls.

Barely bigger than a sparrow,
squat with outsized head, a spear of beak.
Once hung by a thread to foretell the weather
or used by fishermen in feathery lures.

Each feather alone is dull.
Brilliance flares
as light plays on the living whole.

Jenny Donnison