Halcyon | Colin Honnor

I am looking at the red silver blue kingfisher
Not all at once or in that order
The blue called by some spirit of the stream
by others sylph of the river bank,
Legatee of the bridge passage,
Goes to thresh in a plunge pool of  whitescreens
Silver green as the perch struggles
With the infancy of light, the scalpel consequence
I am trying to  exalt the thinginess of its delicate skeleton bones
The narrow ribcage, the beauty of wing-bones
As brittle as a leaf’s armature

A silver thread from your head plaited
to love knot that has no beginning, no end
as you may not spin the wind
to its various capricious threads

This fragile exoskeleton, a maenad in the room of air
As light exfoliate denudes you of all illusion
Even those myths you collected in leaves
To be bound captive, flock to their nests
You thought caught by summer, skilfully
Escape through mesh of thought

And the sea on granite gurgling organ music.

Colin Honnor is widely published in magazines in print and online, including: Bitterzoet, The Screech Owl, Eunoia Review, Crack the Spine, Poetry Bay, The Missing Slate, The Hour of Lead, Sentinel Journal, MessageinaBottle, Ataraxia, Miracle, InkSweatandTears, A New Ulster, The New Shetlander, Hark, Angle, Awen, Allegro and Inclement. He formerly edited Poetry and Audience, is a literary scholar, translator of modern European poetry and runs a fine arts press in the Cotswolds.