Category Andrew Hidas Poems

CROW, UNLUCKY

By Andrew Hidas

What were the odds of it being
this crow in particular and not
one of its hundreds of brethren
now squawking futilely on its
behalf as its hapless, now limp
carcass is being carried furious
and fast across the lawns of
Jacqueline Drive, hard in the
talons of this hawk who passes
within yards of my bicycle as the
victim’s fellow crows dive bomb
every determined flap of its wings?

Every crow spared but this one,
dead, snuffed, just like that, a
meal in the waiting if the hawk
can elude the battalion of angry
crows acting for all the world as
if they will not stand for this atrocity.

So startled am I by this raw hard
scene of everyday terror that I stop
my bike in awe and alarm as the crow
army screams and circles far above,
their fallen comrade then dropped as
suddenly as the hawk had pounced
and snagged it mere seconds ago.

And now it lies inert, heaped in the
middle of a n...

nothing new, nothing to see,
just another mound of rubble

and still the dogs zig and
zag over the cold stones,
their handlers holding tight,
awaiting a pause and deeper

inhalation

now the rescuers kneel
removing stone by careful stone,
the veil of destruction lifted from

the face of a girl

awake, blinking, inert,
four days entombed
but alive, alive oh!

HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH,
HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH

(he sang of things
above and below,
the eternal fusion,
the fast and slow)

(the recurrent broken hallelujahs)

a man lifts her,
this perhaps 4-year-old,
the christ child in swaddling clothes
suffering the sins of the world

lord forgive them, for they know not what they do

HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH,
HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH

he scans the cratered street,
the search now for a car and
swift transport to the hospital

and the announcer, camera crew
providing witness to this atrocity

intones:

it’s a rush to get her to hospi...

wet   life   drip   moist   damp   cloud

here   yes   drink   suck   slurp   gulp

gone   none   parched   pinched   paucity

salve   swim   immerse   cleanse   anoint

where   there   mirage   drought   dry

slip   slide   ease   merge   one   spurt

grasp   groan   cracked   arid   shrivel

douse   dunk   splash   soak   wade.

now oh lord deep bless bliss wet

Water Play by Prashant Godbole

Hands to Heavens by Rob McIlvaine

***

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Twitter: @AndrewHidas

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewhidas/

Deep appreciation to the photographers!

Elizabeth Haslam, whose photos (except for the books) grace the rotating banne...

“In God’s wildness is the hope of the world,”
wrote John Muir while tramping through Alaska on
a long mission to meet that hope on its own terms.
Not to snub the majesty of perfect sunsets,
Muir might hasten to add, but is there a
nobler expression of divine engagement,
of a super-charged world ripe and
overflowing with portent and awe,
than a severely blackened sky followed by
lightning cascading across its canvas?

Or even in suburbia, biking in a hot howling wind,
when one forsakes actually getting anywhere, but
instead peddles slowly, mouth agape at neighborhood
trees gone horizontal under relentless gusts.

One is given to laughter in these moments,
marveling at the audacity of us humans,
all puffed up with self-importance,
Charlie Chaplin characters marching up to
Brawny Nature and proclaiming our freedom
from its transgressions with the bulwarks of
our houses and stores, bricks and concrete.

Is ...