My Poem: Nile's sonnet: Gen

Title: Nile's sonnet
Fandom: The Old Guard
Character: Nile Freeman
Poetic form: English sonnet
Length: 103
Rating: Gen

the soldier dies to be reborn again
the bleeding stops without warning or sign
the skin repairs itself, wounds mend, and then
wild questions rise, by whose or what design

can she die yet defy mortality?
in fog of blank confusion, the soldier stews
until she’s claimed by force of history,
conscripted by unlikely mentor-muse

and family, introductions still new
when sudden call to arms rings out
the soldier knows just what she has to do:
to save the day, her way, and trouble rout

the soldier dies, the warrior’s born, and she
has found a new home, a new way to be

Poet's Corner: Come into Animal Presence by Denise Levertov

Come into Animal Presence by Denise Levertov

Come into animal presence
No man is so guileless as
the serpent. The lonely white
rabbit on the roof is a star
twitching its ears at the rain.
The llama intricately
folding its hind legs to be seated
not disdains but mildly
disregards human approval.
What joy when the insouciant
armadillo glances at us and doesn't
quicken his trotting
across the track and into the palm brush.

What is this joy? That no animal
falters, but knows what it must do?
That the snake has no blemish,
that the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings
in white star-silence? The llama
rests in dignity, the armadillo
has some intention to pursue in the palm-forest.
Those who were sacred have remained so,
holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence
of bronze, only the sight that saw it
faltered and turned from it.
An old joy returns in holy presence.