The Feather

     I started thinking about what happens to a feather when a bird flies. I imagined a feather as strong, but strong because it was subjected to many forces and had to adapt. "The Feather" is my interpretation of what happens to this feather during flight. 

The Feather

It “flies through the air with the greatest of ease” like George Leybourne’s trapeze rider, this keratin creation called a feather.

Nothing is as beautifully magnificent, yet stressed as a feather.

Attached to raptor’s wing, the romantic plight of flight is a torturous ordeal for the feather.

Wind ravages the feather.

This engineering masterpiece enables raptor to career through rapid currents with barley a breath.

Amazing feather!

Barbs separate from their neighbor like a dingy from a storm ridden ship.

Yet, the deed is hardly done for the feather.

In icy cold air, the fibers feel not a thing.

Senseless feather.

It curves in the wind commanding these rapid currents for the raptor.

Though its ends fray, its color never fades.

It soon floats gently to the ground for a soul to find as a sacred symbol.

And so ceases the stress upon the feather.

By: Jessica Herzog

The Rabbit

The hunting process of the lynx isn't pondered and analyzed to the extent the poem makes it out to be. In reality, lynx is hungry, rabbit tries to escape, and "the deed is done". For creativity's sake though, I decided to give emotional depth to the process for a few lines.

The Rabbit

Amidst frosted trees of a forest, in silent serenity, a rabbit sits alone.

Quiet marks tranquility.

Quiet - her invisible curse.

Eyes wide, the rabbit sits in solitude.

A shadow lurks across the snow.

This scared bunny is panicked now, sitting small and alone in the snow.

She is meek and outcast in the snow.

Her nose twitches.

Survival of the fittest is how the world is won.

Who are the strongest and the weakest of their kind?

Survival depends on a mastered mind.

Thoughts entrance the rabbit as she waits in wooded doom.

The lynx stalks behind her.

She is ever silent too.

Trapped here by indecision, where can rabbit run?

As lynx creeps upon her faster, rabbit fears departure of the sun.

Rabbit’s speed is her pride.

Her feet become her fault.

She trips in thick ice crystals.

Then fanged jaw encircles her throat.

Her blood drips.

Drop by drop.

Down to white below.

Red flames melting snow.

This all to quiet rabbit soundlessly, yet painfully surrendered her soul.

Not one ear heard her go.

Into lynx’s tomb, her body quickly slid.

Her psyche became another heart.

She was transformed from outside in.

Success was rabbit’s mirage.

Lynx befriended her wit.

Survival of the fittest is a game played how we see it.

But be correct.

Don’t over-think it.

Poor rabbit.

Is life now a brutality of blood or broken dreams?

Perhaps a paradise masses crave to see?

To lynx and rabbit, life is neither.

Existence is a quest for control.

Who maintains their power, voice, and thought as jugular drips into snow?

Lynx now feels triumphant, but rabbit has truly won.

Never again is she seen as silent.

Lynx’s quiet is majestic when she runs.

by: Jessica Herzog

A lynx I drew based off of a picture in a photo series from http://www.cornellgill.com/