A Sunday Walk with Cormorants

My response to imaginary garden with real toads Not What We came To See ~ Micro Poetry

We’re putting the “mini’ back into the Sunday Mini-Challenge, and returning to the option of form poetry. The challenge is to write a poem in no more than 10 lines, choosing our own form or sticking to free verse. This weekend, our frame of reference is ‘This is not what we came to see…’ quoted from Brian Patten’s poem, ‘The Projectionist’s Nightmare’, which I have included below my own.

Along the shore, cormorants guard untidy nests.

One breaks away and dives into the lake,

A sinking stone. It reappears, wings soaking wet,

And stretches out to dry, gaunt and black,

A sinister black cross with metallic sheen,

Dripping waterweed, slimy and green.

Fishing line unwinds like baby eels from its beak,

Anchored by the sharpness of a fish hook,

Causes Sunday visitors to gasp at human cruelty –

That was not what they came to see.

 

© Kim M. Russell, 2016

Cormorant

Image found on www.bbc.co.uk

 

The Projectionist’s Nightmare

This is the projectionist’s nightmare:
A bird finds its way into the cinema,
Finds the beam, flies down it,
smashes into a screen depicting a garden,
a sunset and two people being nice to each other.
Real blood, intestines, slither down
the likeness of a tree.
“This is no good,” screams the audience,
“This is not what we came to see.”

Brian Patten

20 thoughts on “A Sunday Walk with Cormorants”

    1. I cannot stand shooting, hunting and fishing. But it seems to be more of a ‘man thing’. And they don’t seem to care about the damage they do. It’s terrible to witness this sort of thing.

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    1. Thank you, Sherry. I have been having problems commenting on some posts today and apologise if you haven’t seen any responses to your poems from me. Have a good Sunday evening – or is it already Monday where you are?

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    1. I just went over to read and left a comment but it didn’t seem to be published so I tried again and it didn’t work again. I will try on another post. What I liked about your poem was the use of sound, rhyme and rhythm. Enjoy the rest of the weekend! Love Kim x

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    1. I get so angry when I see this sort of thing here on the Norfolk Broads – it’s a conservation area and as well as fish hooks, I often spot plastic bottles or other packing in the water where humans just drop it in..

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  10. I think we (well some of us) are cruel by indifference, never consider the knock-on effects of our actions or lack of same as in tidying up our mess. And nature suffers…
    Anna :o]

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