By the Clock of Tide and Stars

I smile at the clockwork birds
ploughing sand, their black legs whirring,
a splash of spangled sanderlings
with a wintry breeze beneath their wings.

Ploughing sand, their black legs whirring,
they were steered here by a cosmic force
with a wintry breeze beneath their wings,
following ancient paths of stars.

They were steered here by a cosmic force
from their Arctic breeding turf,
following ancient paths of stars;
now they rush at sparkles of gushing surf.

Kim M. Russell, 22^nd April 2018

My response to The Poetry School NaPoWriMo prompt for Day 22: Pantoum

Today Ali would like us to write a pantoum, an anglophone variation on the Malay ‘pantun’, which uses quatrains with repeated lines, much like a villanelle. Each stanza takes the second line of the stanza above as its first line, and the last line of the stanza above as its third line. He says that our poems can have any number of quatrains and our example poem is ‘Zadie Smith’s first novel is‘ by Bridget Minamore.