Pierre Bonnard's White Cat
Soon, the neck will lengthen,
The way Flux has
Visited upon its legs.
And the tail sprouts tufts,
Rough and black.
Fur sheds,
Whiskers too not spared.
One by one,
Brown spots pop,
Blooming all over
And for bonus,
A headband of horns.
Fish becomes distasteful.
A purple tongue unfurls
Half a meter long
With a penchant for
Savannah greens.
C'est la vie.
Au revoir, paws.
Bonjour, hooves.
On Meeting the Artist
Berthe Morisot at the Lake
(1883)
It's a miracle
To have escaped this far -
By far the perfect landscape
For a getaway,
A quarter and a century
Away from you;
From your emails, apps and
Everything I'm fearful
Of missing out.
Here, incognito,
Nobody ruffles my feathers.
I glide willy-nilly
On this mirror-like lake,
Clouds trembling in my wake.
Now and then, boaters
Whistle and wave,
I glow, drinking in
The verdancy, feeling
The vestiges of modern day
Maladies dissipate.
The waters affirming
A revivified me;
My neck as slender
As a wine glass stem
Sans rings of wrinkles.
I could crow all day.
Cruising on, I spy,
By the lakeside,
A pair of eyes lodged
On me - an artist's eyes
Dark and gleaming,
Her passion throbbing
Through her paintbrush
As she cries out,
" Stay put, girls! The swan
Is sailing into my picture!"
Cycling Around Earth
Windswept carriages
Of conglomerates
Nimbus in nature,
Who are the passengers
En route?
Are they by any chance
from The Danube, Mississippi,
Cannonball sea jellies
Washed up on shore or
Possibly beads
Of perspiration from farmers
Harvesting the paddy fields?
And who knows, maybe even
A cauliflower cloud
Once exhalations from
The Amazonian trees
Racing past Westminster Abbey
In 1559 the hour of
Queen Elizabeth's coronation,
Having recently assimilated
Into Iceberg A-76:
World's largest,
Size of Rhode Island
Now sailing across
The Antarctica Sea.
Deluged by the flood
Of speculative joy,
Knowing there's no way
To condense our Planet's
Hydrological history from
Its toddling days
Naked of floral and fauna.
A crystal globule pelts
On my windowpane,
Tracing the glass
With its travelogue
Before free falling onto
A frond of a potted fern
With others hot on its trail,
Hemming silvery sequins
To my little patch
Of after-rain world.
What an elegant way
To linger, I thought,
While waiting patiently
For transit.
Pooling Together
I may not have the answer
To the eternal question of
"Who am I?" or
"What is the meaning of life?"
What I know is
What I am.
What I am is a ripple
That shows up at five
Every morning,
In a pool of existence
Bright and murky at turns.
I'm a ripple bearing
Moods and thoughts
With legs, fins, tails
And maybe even minds
Of their own,
Perpetuating willy-nilly
The seeds of wanderlust.
For better or for worse
They will travel far abroad,
Across channels and over
The face of the earth;
Paddling, swimming through
Rapids, falls, whirlpools,
Always venturing further
Than necessary because
It's in their nature
To be enthusiastic, infectious
In all currents of life.
I am a ripple,
Of this, I am as
Sure as the sun that
Will rise tomorrow.
I may be light but
Never inconsequential;
Coalescing with other ripples
In this tumultuous pool,
Sculpting waves from which
History is surging
Moment by moment.
The Names of Birds
More often than not,
We encounter names of birds
that hint at their
Dominant traits -
Red-crested finch,
Dot-winged ant wren,
Fan-tailed cuckoo,
Buff-breasted sandpiper
But what makes an amateur
Like me perk up instantly
Are names preceded by
Adjectives not commonly
Associated with birds -
Sombre kingfisher,
Modest tiger-parrot,
Fearful owl, and as for the
Perplexing scrub wren,
I can't wait to look up
The source of its confusion.
Then there are some birds
That ended up sounding
More exotic than they are
When their names are paired
Alongside other animals' -
Fox kestrel,
Dolphin gull,
Zebra dove,
Tiger shrike
And the eccentricities
Of bird names know no bounds,
Spilling over to the
Field of gastronomy
With names you can order
Off a menu -
Macaroni penguin,
Corn crake,
Black-honey buzzard and was
The Sandwich tern named
After its notoriety for
Stealing beachgoers' snacks?
I doubt so.
Talk about perplexities.
Names with vocations are
By far my favourites
Because they make the birds
Sound somewhat industrious,
Each having more on its plate
Than just a bird's life -
Coppersmith barbet,
Tailorbird,
Trumpeter swan and even one
That has taken on
The mantle of a
Spiritual overseer -
Cardinal Lory.
Ellen Chia lives in Thailand and whilst pondering over the wonders and workings of her
tiny universe finds herself succumb time after time to the act of poetry making.
Her works have been published in The Ekphrastic Review, The Honest Ulsterman,
Neologism Poetry Journal, Zingara Poetry Review, The Tiger Moth Review and
Chiron Review.
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