Ducking and weaving

This strange and wonderful
spark of life you carry;
this fizz of neurons in your brain 
and engine beating in your breast 
is all the more remarkable for what it means.

It shouts aloud 'Survival'.
It boasts 'Resilience'
because it knows, 
it somehow senses, 
how your line of life has
run unbroken, back 
through generations,
ducking and weaving through war
and famine, flood and drought.

Ducking and weaving,
through occupation and invasion,
persecution, plague, disease;
catastrophes of climate change 
when ice sheets came and went.

Ducking and weaving through 
the ancient tribes, and back
beyond humanity to bloodlines 
we would scarcely recognise;
that met and mated,
nurturing their offspring 
long enough to pass
the spark of life to you.

Ducking and weaving
you dodged, you diced with death. 
Continents opened and closed,
the asteroid wreaked 
its dark destruction but,
ducking and weaving,
you survived, carrying the embers
of the miracle of life,
dazzlingly defiant in the face
of all the universe can throw.

So...

You can face today.

Birds invisible

I looked for the invisible birds
that stirred the wood with song 
and stitched the silence of the sleeping trees.

But all found was leaf-still air 
and coloured threads of melody.

I watched for the disembodied bird
shapeshifting through the trees;
the soul that sang in notes of light.

But all I saw were shadowed flittings 
on the edge of sight.

I leave the wood with webs of birdsong 
tangled in my hair and weightless 
semi-quavers feathering my skin.

I leave the wood more peacefully, by far,
than when I entered in.


Thanks to Mike and Julie for the Forest Church 'Bird' experience that provided the inspiration...
No birds were named in the making of this poem :-)