en-raptored 4 0

[craig johnston]

[zero]

eagle

he clasps the crag with crooked hands;
close to the sun in lonely lands,
ringed with the azure world, he stands.

the wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
he watches from his mountain walls,
and like a thunderbolt he falls.

alfred lord tennyson 1851

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[craig johnston]

[Aphrodite]

I love falcons and hawks. Here's another favourite, a bald eagle.

[zero]

hawk roosting

i sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
inaction, no falsifying dream
between my hooked head and hooked feet:
or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

the convenience of the high trees!
the air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
are of advantage to me;
and the earth's face upward for my inspection.

my feet are locked upon the rough bark.
it took the whole of Creation
to produce my foot, my each feather:
now I hold Creation in my foot

or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -
i kill where I please because it is all mine.
there is no sophistry in my body:
my manners are tearing off heads -

the allotment of death.
for the one path of my flight is direct
through the bones of the living.
no arguments assert my right:

the sun is behind me.
nothing has changed since I began.
my eye has permitted no change.
i am going to keep things like this.


ted hughes 1960

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[Aphrodite]

I am the eagle, I live in high country
In rocky cathedrals that reach to the sky
I am the hawk and there's blood on my feathers
But time is still turning they soon will be dry
And all those who see me and all who believe in me
Share in the freedom I feel when I fly

Come dance with the west wind and touch on the mountain tops
Sail o'er the canyons and up to the stars
And reach for the heavens and hope for the future
And all that we "can" be, not what we are

John Denver
The Aerie

[craig johnston]

'got any books on hawks missis?'

[craig johnston]

[craig johnston]

[zero]

"it took the whole of Creation to produce my foot"

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[Frieda]

[zero]

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"nothing has changed since i began.
my eye has permitted no change.
i am going to keep things like this"

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[craig johnston]

[zero]

windhover

i caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin,
dapple-drawn falcon, in his riding
of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
high there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
in his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
as a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend; the hurl and gliding
rebuffed the big wind. my heart in hiding
stirred for a bird--the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

brute beauty and valor and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
buckle! and the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

no wonder of it; sheer plod makes plow down sillion
shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.


gerard manley hopkins, 1877

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[Hyakujo's Fox]