I had an encounter with an elderly blackbird. This is what happened. Poetically speaking.

Bedraggled but never bewildered,
Besotted by your last experience of
This season of deluge.
Your venerable silhouette
         A starless gossamer
         A wise fragility
Lingering under a branch
Who well-conceives the aching in your bones,
And aches with you in heavy maturity.

There, you pause in wait for your
Castaway moment of collected contentment,
Inquisitive head switching between left and right,
Finding little misery in the bleakly sodden elements
Though they pay you no due-
Time has long been their ally
Where He remains coarse and condescending with your case.

Spotting your destination through the torrent you
  Half hop,
     Half skip,
         Half jump
Towards rippling landscaped mirrors,
Distant cousins to the ringed ebony orbs which survey their illusion,
Which see it gently distorting at each swell and
Each minuscule disturbance upon the polish
From fragmented webs of water, hazily descending.

Temptation and temptation,
Abandon airborne talents for grounded simplicity.
Lower your beak,
Beacon in the grey,
Crouched down low as though to drink,
But, instead,
Concealed feet spring onto a shardless reflection,
Rhythmically splashing through a hollow superstition-
No fear of seven years when your race is nearly run.

Jewelled drizzle drops worn
Emblazoned across ruffled chest feathers and
Freedom’s folded metaphor,
Are rendered antiquated medals from your time
(Of which little thrives to make cursing precipitation a worthy pursuit)
You shake them off with small concern.

You are too taken with your moment,
Hopping to your soul’s emanating rhythm,
Unknowingly gifting a lonely surveyor with the hope
That one day she, too, may learn
To dance in the rain.

Featured image by Jussi Silfver. Available on Flickr under Creative Commons 2.0 licence.