Ylang-Ylang
Barely there,
like the fuzzy edge
of a dream ...
chasing the echo,
soothing as a streamwade
in Death Valley,
or a mother's embrace
after cold shoulders,
its filigree
olfactory lullaby
whispers "hey now,
it'll be all
right."
Some fragrances
draw smiles
while releasing inner
tears.
Ylang-Ylang is one.
All I Have Never Seen
All I have never seen,
locked in the long-ago
...
young ocean's trilobites
wilderness clear of man
Stonehenge in ceremony
Petra, its pinkness new
lost gold of Inca legend
clipper ship's regal
stride ...
How I could ramble on!
All there is still to
see ...
aurora's rainbow
curtains
moon overhanging hills
galaxies' bling on black
waterfalls glimpsed
through green
tower thrust into sunset
...
Though countless
beauties linger,
why do I often feel
as if the best had gone?
Fantasia
(previously published in Moon-Drenched Fables, in 2009)
Paradise, Eden and
Shangri-La
Blessed Isles and Avalon
and Valhalla
Xanudu, Elysium, Utopia
Neverland and Middle
Earth and Narnia ...
Happy Hunting Grounds
and El Dorado,
distant as the moon or
close as Colorado -
humanity harbours its
greatest bliss
when some ideal world
shines through in this.
How the fancy glides to
fog-enshrouded wonders -
Camelot kingdoms -, for
their beauty hungers.
In lost-world plateau,
horizon dim and azure,
in mystic wooded glen,
our dreams are wont to gather.
Xanudu, Elysium, Utopia
Blessed Isles and
Avalon, etcetera ...
Amid sophistication's
plethora
one yearns to find a
Neverland or Narnia.
Watching The Line
I'm nobirdy special,
but I wouldn't belong to
their species
for all the corn in
pigeondom.
They need too much,
They worry too much,
and they can't even fly.
Look at the line of them
now -
the same creatures that,
month after month,
wait, sweaty and fanning
themselves in the heat,
until they can get
inside that building they call banco
which dispenses the
small rectangular papers they cherish.
Seems that, unlike us,
without those papers
they can't get any food.
We can
cool off easily enough
by winging to the shady
precincts
of the gardens around
San Francisco Church,
but they have no such
freedom.
So alone or with mates,
there they wait,
and mostly ignore us,
despite our numbers,
for being just common,
messy birds,
but one among them loves
us
(and I like to think,
especially me,
because I'm lame, and
because my chest-feathers
boast more than the
usual iridescence.)
She's my favourite human,
actually,
and I'm getting almost
brave enough to eat from her hand.
Whatever her worries
are,
she always brings us a
bag of crumbs.
Last month I think she
lost
her mate, as she came
alone, in black,
her eyes reddened.
He was more
folded than she and
walked with a stick.
The two of them would
enter the church
afterpickingup their
little papers; probably
they talked with
God. He talks to me
sometimes when I'm high
above
the street-hubbub, and I
coo back at Him.
It's peaceful to watch
the clouds
and ponder his
whereabouts and wingspan ...
But I digress.
This lady who throws crumbs
has been so good to me
that I wanted to give
her something today -
the shiny yellow thing
kept hidden on a ledge
inside
the latticed wooden
ceiling of a dome.
My ancestor found this
object
uncountable pigeonspans
ago,
when vehicles were tall
and square
and pulled by horses.
A lady wearing a white
mantilla
dropped it in the
street, the story goes,
while descending from
one such vehicle,
and my plucky forebird
snatched it up
before another could spy
it.
It's so pretty,
especially in sunlight,
and as humans even now
enjoy wearing similar
baubles,
I think she might like
it -
might even feel honoured
to keep it
because it was once
mine.
Yes, I'll drop it
right into her hand so
there's no mistake,
when she appears ... any
minute now.
I'll just keep watching
the line.
Lark Beltran, originally from California, has lived in Lima, Peru for many years as an ESL teacher. Over the decades, many of Lark's poems have appeared in online and offline journals.
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