of feather and stone

rock high against
the firmament
stone smooth
against the palm–
what wishes are veined
inside each heart?
which dreams skim
the surface in currents
riding wings that touch
both earth and sky?
who can draw the line
between what is
and what might be?

Jane’s recent poems mentioning kestrels reminded me of this strange collage I made awhile ago from a kestrel painting and a brush drawn portrait, neither of which satisfied me.

It was inspired by Ethiopian healing scrolls, which contain both words and talismanic images, although except for the square face in the center, it doesn’t resemble any of the images in the scrolls. I still don’t know what to make of the collage, but now I, too, have attached words to it.

A quadrille for dVerse, where De has provided us with the word stone.

46 thoughts on “of feather and stone”

  2. The line about veins caught my eye, as you see veins in rock, as well as in living creatures. And I love your question at the end.
    The art is strange, and creepy, I thought at first, but it sort of draws me in the more I look at it–bird woman.

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  4. This is a fascinating pair. And the healing scrolls so interesting; I’d never heard of that tradition before and now I want to look for some way I can play with the Net of Solomon… Thank you for giving my mind a new puzzle!

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  5. Yes! You have linked the sky and stone with the flight of the kestrel. Who’s to say where one ends and the other begins?
    I looked up American kestrels and they are quite a bit smaller but brighter coloured than ours.

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      1. I saw on Wikipedia that you also call them sparrow hawk. We have sparrow hawks too but they’re not like kestrels. Smaller and fiercer with extremely strong talons. Do your kestrels hover, do the Holy Spirit as they say here?

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        1. They do. I think that’s why they were mistakenly identified as kestrels when actually they are not. I don’t know why they are called sparrow hawks as well. They are not those either. But names, once given, tend to stick. American robins are not related to European ones, but that’s what the first European settlers thought they were. And here we are.

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                    2. The English-speaking world has got it bad. There seem to be so many new ‘truths’ than cannot be denied on pain of being called reactionary or fascist. It hasn’t got such a stranglehold here, and many aspects of wokism get a healthy dose of ridicule. The pendulum will swing.

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  7. I truly love the poem and its spirit. I also get an organic feel from the collage. I didn’t even realize it was a bird at first as my eyes were drawn to the face. Then I thought it was a face in a flower vase lol. Then as the vista of it opened up it paralleled how the poem opened up. Haven’t checked out the healing scrolls link yet but will in just a minute here.

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  13. I love the image: when you bring all of those elements together, something special happens!

    ‘who can draw the line
    between what is
    and what might be?’

    seems most appropriate here.

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