FABULOUS CREATURES: MELT by PATRICIA YOUNG

Susie Osler, Traces series

Morning at the Cardinal Café, where a strong flat white and even a decaf can cause visions of bright chattering birds to enter a conversation

Conversation with potter, image-maker, and steward of the land Susie Osler (see also Fieldwork) this snowy spring morning about words, the wild, voice, material, now, then

Then this mirror-poem, "Melt" by Patricia Young, from 2008's Here Come the Moonbathers (first published on the Parliamentary Poet Laureate Poem of the Day website) -- here's a little bit:

Patricia Young

MELT

One morning they appear in nameless droves.
Fabulous creatures flicking their silver fins and ancient jewels.

A long lost mythology? Weird migration?
They lurched onto the tundra like bawling infants,

announced themselves with the subtlety of a brass band.
Wave upon wave, antlers vibrating, tails ablaze.

Who? we asked. Who are you?
One day they weren’t there and the next

they were traveling toward us
with the speed of a birchwood forest.

We gathered to mourn those passing
swiftly into memory, the polar bear and arctic seal.

Time cracked.
The century was thinner than ice.

We had 1200 words for reindeer but not one
for hornet, robin, elk, salmon, barn owl.

Try to understand: we had never seen a barn.
...

Read the whole of Patricia Young's "Melt"  here.

Image of Mars courtesy NASA/JPL/University of Arizona