My house is lime green
with black trim
like a garden
for grave diggers.
Surrounding it on rainy afternoons
are rings of brilliant jade leaves
on shiny black trunks
swaying like boxers.
One of the spindles
has come out from the porch rail.
It holds steady, but
I don't trust it like I used to
when the noisy morning starlings
and the raucous ones in evening
sounded and numbered
the same.
Your first stanza is so good! I feel the poignancy in not trusting the railing as you did when the number of birds stayed the same, a metaphor for loss and times past. Sigh. I feel that ache.
ReplyDelete"Like a garden for gravediggers" -- OUCH. What does a gravedigger do in a garden but dig up fresh memories only to bury them again? So the starlings sound and number the same, morning or night to that gravedigger. That vague unease in the poem's third stanza seems to suggest insecurity, even alarm, maybe unwillingness to succumb to the status quo. I'm not quite sure what to make of that, except that a repair is mandatory.
ReplyDeleteYou use subtlety to powerful effect, Shay. Smooth and fine this is.
ReplyDelete