The Finches

If the finches should call you
On the land line
In the hall
Of the old house,

There is no need to set aside your book
Or to trouble yourself at all--
It is only a draft
Through a window
Where an empty vase still sits.

It is only the gone summer,
Only the things that could never be;
It is only these.
It is only me.

And if there is a nest
On the pole,
Above the transformer,
Where the snow clouds skulk and glower...

There is an egg,
And in the egg, a memory that does not change,
But is, instead,
As static as a china dish.
Likewise, there is a lace-edged wound,

And within the wound,
An hour,
And within that hour,
The high-grown fields,
Your bare arms with their gooseflesh skin,

And one secreted, hoarded darling--
Palmed in my hand to kiss.

If the finches should call you
Before rot
And ice
Destroy...

It is only me, up on the wire,
Sealed and
Cauterized
With my voice.

I remain as mad
As mad has always been--
A balance pole
Of oriole
And owl bones

Long and thin.
Find the dazed bird on your porch boards,
Dashed against your doorway, dying;
Uncurl my fingers,
Lean close, and laugh,

And love me
One last time.
_______

Picture by Eugenio Recuenco, sent to me by Kerry O'Connor, my fellow Toad. It was originally part of her challenge to me to write to the pictures of Recuenco, which I did, but not to this one, until now.

This is for dverse OLN, because my bestie, Hedgewitch, is hosting. 

Progressive Symptomology / La Guerre

Kerry, at Real Toads, has issued me a personal challenge to write to the art of Eugenio Recuenco. I have accepted her challenge. Twice.

PROGRESSIVE SYMPTOMOLOGY

The disease began in the heart,
As all diseases do.
There were no doctors, then; no medicine,
But the nurses could smell it.
The nurses knew.

A normal heart fills
Like a drunkard's wine cup, again and again.
It floats, a hovering, invisible host,
Passing it around;
Spreading it thin.

The disease began in his heart,
Which, up until then,
Had been as anonymous within as a
Quiet neighbor, unseen and unknown,
A diamond in a fen.

A normal nurse waits
All in white like a bride, knowing her place,
Waiting at the station, or in the wings,
Like a sluggish pulse
Burning to race.

His disease began in the heart,
Then spread apace,
Involving his eyes as he declared his feckless love
Laid out in labored sighs, all over a nurse,
All over his face.
_______

LA GUERRE

I kissed a German woman,
And it brought the bombers,
That night
And every night since.
Heads have rolled,
And in my bones, I can feel
Little black eagles making their nests.

You'll say, the pilots are dead.
But, no.
They may be dust, dry as stones,
But they bomb the streets
In little neat rows
All because I kissed a woman;
All because I couldn't say no.

She warned me.
She told me, you are poor little Belgium,
Trotting out your schoolgirl French,
Fragile as a croissant in the cross hairs;
But I kissed her anyway
Like a camp-following fifteen minute wench,
And now, every night,
My little black eagles fly up through the bombs,
As quaint and fine as Kaisers;
My one-winged strutting prayers.
_______

art by Eugenio Recuenco, poetry by Shay Caroline