evensong

For dVerse Tuesday poetics: the poet’s storehouse, celebrating National Thesaurus Day (US):

The clamour
of the hundred-member
froglet
kazoo-band
is punctuated
by the flatulent bellow
of the pobblebonk.

Their amphibious hubbub
rises from the damn
as an almost-solid layer of sound.

Above,
the dulcet tones of the carolling magpie
curl through the air
like a sweet fragrance.
He embellishes his song with each repetition,
creating variations,
adding overtones
harmonising
(impossibly)
with himself.

Kookaburra,
ever unimpressed,
and, indeed,
unimpressible,
chortles, chuckles,
and then explodes in full-throated,
full-bodied,
cackles –

silencing the frogs
and sending magpie home in a huff.

 

The challenge was to use a word from each of these lists:

   bellow; clink; drone; jingle; quiver;
   clamour; dissonant; rip-roaring; tempestuous; vociferous;
   dulcet: honeyed; poetic; sonorous; tonal;
   blabber; cackle; dribble; gurgle; seethe;
   beseech; chant; drawl; embellish; intone

So obviously the poem had to be about either my (droning, bellowing, dissonant, vociferous, blabbering, cackling…) kids, or the (other) local wildlife.  

I can’t post files, but here are links to the frog and bird songs mentioned if you want to hear them:
eastern sign bearing froglets (kazoo band)
pobblebonk
magpie – quite different in look and sound to norther hemisphere magpies.
kookaburra 

night songs

In response to Eugi’s weekly prompt, “Cosmos“:

The fence hums, the frogs sing
and across the hills
an owl calls for company –
and is answered.

My breath merges with the wind
softly stirring the leaves,
and my feet provide a back-beat
as I climb the hill –

to where the milk in the sky flows,
a bright river above me,
pulling me upwards,
to drown in its silent symphony.

fence song, frog song

The fence is singing,
each strand giving,
its reply to the wind.
It hums in harmony
to the frog-song rising,
rejoicing, from the dam.

In the right conditions, our fence sings in the wind. The top two strands are barbed wire, so the resonance is damped, but the lower four strands vibrate and resonate in the wind, and each produces a distinct frequency, but you have to lean close to hear it.  On a windy evening the fence sings harmony to the melody of the frogs.