linda Lee Lyberg of dVerse Poets Pub has invited us to submit a poem including “morning” and in the Quadrille form – 44 words excluding title.

My mind nodded to Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem ‘The Windhover’ (about the British bird, the Kestrel) for some reason, though my heart went out to the shorebirds here, dead from Avian Flu and pounded by waves, buried in blown sand.

I’m just telling you this so that you think of Hopkins’ “morning’s minions” as poetic, rather than as one-eyed cartoon characters…

fractured pinions

late encountered morning's minions;
drooping wing and fractured pinions;
slooping round the Bay as terns.

gone the English sheep, the querns.

call the cows, the calves, the wether;
thistle down among the heather.
Lord MacAonghais, make your claim
speak out in your Gaelic name


© Kathy Labrum McVittie 22 August 2022