Illustration Friday - Blur

Kingfisher
watercolour and oil pastel

This week over at Illustration Friday, the word is 'Blur'. Here's my impression of a kingfisher emerging from the river with its catch! I hear these beautiful birds around here almost daily and catch fleeting glimpses of their jewel colours - almost always a blur! I would dearly love to see one close up for long enough to take a good photo.

Brown as nettle beer the stream
Shadow freckled speckled with sun
Slides between the trees
Not a ripple breaks in foam
Only the frilled hedge parsley falls
White upon the ground
No insect drills the air no sound
Rustles among the reeds
Bird and leaf and thought
Are still

When shot from the blue a Kingfisher
Flashes between the ferns-

Jewelled torpedo sparkling by
Under the bridge and gone
Yet bright as a bead
Behind the eye
The image blazes on

I like this little Kingfisher poem I found in a book of calligraphy by Janet Mehighan.