Crane’s Soliloquy in a Midnight Hue
What are we,
but angles stretched into infinity,
sharp-billed mysteries piercing the canvas
of a sky too quiet to notice?
The world offers me no mirrors,
only this reflection in your eye,
where I hang, suspended
in my own dark symphony—
a monochrome of shadow and bone,
all ruffled sighs
and feathered breaths.
Oh, eye, so round—
like the first fruit to fall
from a tree of silence,
your golden green glow is neither predator
nor prey.
You witness me without blame,
for I am only ever passing through.
Listen.
There is no wind here, no tremor,
just the steady arc of my bill,
orange and earth-born,
fashioned by centuries of unspeaking.
Yet, if I had a voice,
would it be a shriek, or a song?
Would I spill a thousand words,
each tumbling from my mouth like stones?
Would I tell you of the reeds, the water,
the smallness of frogs beneath my wings
or the infinite patience
of being this—
a crane without name,
etched in nature's gaze?
See how the dark presses against me,
a silent partner in this waltz?
It teaches me what it is to forget—
to forget color, forget time,
forget the seasons that rise like questions
and fall like the unasked.
My wings,
which you do not see,
hold no answers.
They only hold the space
between sky and sea,
a promise of flight
and the weight of stillness.
So, what am I but a blur
of feather and flesh,
a crane on the edge of a dream
that won’t wake?
Call me what you will—
a sentinel of dusk,
a fleeting passage,
a whisper in the wild.
But know this,
even when I leave,
when the eye closes and darkness takes hold,
I am never truly gone.
I am the stretch
of every silence
that follows me.
#CranePoetry #NatureInspired #WildlifeReflections #MidnightMysteries #FeatheredSolitude #BirdSymbolism #UnorthodoxPoetry #NatureWriting #DarkPoetry #PoetryCommunity
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