The Thoughtful Raven - haibun (haiku+prose) - after Ted Hughes and The Thought Fox - Kurt Jackson and The Thoughtful Raven (Charcoal and ink sketch 2007) - ekphrastic poem | haiku | haibun

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The Thoughtful Raven

after Ted Hughes, and Kurt Jackson

The raven grows out of swift strokes in a moment of midnight: 

Corvid, sublingual, 

in sixty-five vocalisations of its kind, 

from worms to whales; battlefield and gibbet; 

to an excarnation platform; 

the raven’s thought of food is foremost.

The requiem bird is a shark of the wind.

the fox’s bark

for a moment

after echoes

There are stars and stars and stars

and the raven thoughtful in its field.

The bird is glossed in purple, green and blue,

its call blunt with primary colour; 

wind and rain; and hourglass grains 

                                                       escaping

cemetary stone

digger bees emerge

from letters

as stars lose focus in morning light 

God is in the detail of ripples of silence

inside the caw

a knuckle in blue jeans ripped

while a smell of white forms

    out of granular dark

the writer is chugging ink

from a forearm to fingers to nib, 

the raven is done for the night.

rabbit dusk

goldfinches vibrate

across teasels

Note:

The haibun is influenced by:

Ted Hughes

The Thought-Fox

From The Hawk in the Rain 1957

and 

Kurt Jackson RWA

Thoughtful Raven, November 2006

Pencil and ink (25cm x 24cm)

The Thoughtful Raven©Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Blithe Spirit 26.4 winter issue haibun 

Anthology Credit:   The New English Verse: An International Anthology of Poetry

ed. Suzie Palmer ISBN: 9789385945694 Cyberwit 2017

The Thought Fox: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/thought-fox

The Thoughtful Raven: https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/lot-images.atgmedia.com/SR/10042/2894227/66-201416163158_original.jpg

More about halibun:

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/haibun-prose-with-haiku-writing-and.html

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/alan-summers-appears-in-new-haibun.html

Inspiring quotes about the new course The Passion of Haibun:
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/the-passion-of-haibun-online-course.html

  
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