The Hawk

 By a fence line in the damp green of the morning

a hawk by gifted vision caught a wren.

There underneath his claws she learned the sense behind the laws

and she'll never by the fence line sing again.

In the evening by the fence line lay her feathers

which I gathered up to weave a tiny dress.

Stars said, "No, it cannot fit," but I whispered love to it

and by daylight I stood head to toe in yes. 

By the fence line in the damp green of the morning

I made from apple wood a mandolin

to play the hawk a tune, oh aren't you pretty as the moon

and at his touch I felt the answer sinking in. 

______

shared with Desperate Poets Open Link. 

Edwina Eileen Etiquette

Edwina Eileen Etiquette
got all she could getiquette.
She caught her neighbors' Galliformes
and turned them into Maniformes.
Exclaim! Exclaim! (went other dames)
and loosed uncomplimentary names,
but were her needs all metiquette?
Edwina says, "You betiquette!" 
__________

Galliformes = chickens and other large ground-feeding birds.

For day 7 and for "Just One Word" at Toads.

Softer Heart

I cannot find my softer heart
by wing or dusk-light call.
I cannot find my softer heart
by barter or by broken bell.

I know you. You're the one I looked for every day.
You the face from miles away, you the wrong face anyway.

I cannot find my softer song.
by trick, by dawn, or water pond.
I cannot find my softer song
but still I whisper...on and on.
_______

for my own Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads. "Corvid and sit a while."     

Magpie

I was born in this tree,
and the sun and stars circle 'round it
endlessly.

When I marry, I shall be wearing
a berry train braided by bridesmaids
tirelessly.

To me has been given
this tree, these fruits, this scorn for you,
intruder who dares

approach my bower.
God has given you all the empty air
below--stay there.
_______

Pigeon Superstition

Why did they put a ledge here?
I've got to get you out here.
The cop's got erudition--
he'll read me Yeats in prison.

He called you on his cell phone
cos baby you're my love jones.
I'm out here on a mission--
it's pigeon superstition.

Three steps left will make you be
my bitchin love eternally;
and if that fails, then turn around,
and magnetize you downtown.

If you come and if we fall,
we'll look like ants but feel like gods.
We won't blame the Irish cop
if we come to a sudden stop.

Backwards counting down by threes
will bring your smokin' self to me.
It's not infatuation fiction--
it's pigeon superstition.

It's you and me and Walden too,
that's what superstition do.
________

for Out Of Standard at Real Toads. "Pigeon Superstition"

Thanks to Jarrod Dyson of the Kansas City Royals, who famously quipped "That's what speed do."

The song whose melody just happens to fit. Thank you Susie Clevenger.

 

The Birder

I fell out of love with myself--
I was cruel, I admit it.
I said things, things I'm not proud of,
and had no mercy, no care for what I did.

All the birds I am made from--
my own distinct darlings and devils--
elude illustration,
cataloging,
and most particularly, shotguns.

This happens, from time to time--
this disenchantment, this anger, this flocking out on the ledge.
Loud noises ruin everything,
and when I am feeling this way,
I am a cacophony.

See how clever you are.
See how my birds come to you, in winter
in summer, in distress and in droves,
saying "She is gone mad again, and we cannot reckon anymore."
See how you shush and shelter them,
my storm orphans.

Here is the curved sky,
the similar earth below;
here is the birdhouse with its precise holes for entry,
and its green shingled roof for keeping out.

You asked me for a bird, tonight, knowing I wouldn't refuse.
You brought no cage, no tether.
How quiet it got, so that all there was to hear was feathers
as I flew back into myself and became this poem,

the one you saved,
the one I wrote in birdsong for you.
______

for Every Day I Write The Book at Real Toads. 

 

I Was Old When I Fell In Love

I was old when I fell in love.
You should have seen the local teenagers--
so respectful as they removed my heavy groceries,
my shoulder bag
and my house keys.

My blood had gone sluggish in my veins,
like the biddy who holds up the drug store line,
blindly picking ancient coins from a tiny purse.
Is that a penny or a dime?
Systolic or diastolic?
How much was it, again?

Oh go ahead, laugh.
I was old when I fell in love,
like the bird that goes bright after blundering into a window--
red as a June rose, 
sliding slowly down the pane,
as elegant as a silent-era diva expiring in the fourth reel.

And my beloved?
She bakes, and goes up in the trees 
searching the branches all morning long.
In late afternoon when I begin to nod,
she tells me there is a future for everyone.
Then she offers me cake,
fluff filled with holes,
made to rise with crossed fingers, oil, and eggs.
_______

the lock

There is a small lock inside me,
kept close between my ever-folded
ever-hidden
falcon wings,

and it keeps beating,
keeps keeping me here,
bless it.
Bless its tireless devotion to this life I've made

from scraps and blood, sugar and hope.
I don't think I'll see the summer again,
but I remember her as she was when I was young--
long, careless, cicada-buzzed and deep.

What have I done, with all the cloud-changed hours?
Have I loved you?
I have.
Have I told you?
Yes, constantly and every chance I got.

I want to finish this book, and then one more.
I want to enjoy a few more meals.
I want to see these mighty snows made meek and melted.
I will miss my dog, but he will rejoin me in time.

The falcon inside me is worrying the ties
that keep the lock in place.
I can feel her working, and the sky, waiting.
It will be all right.

If I am a little bit melancholy, it is because I am surprised,
astonished, really,
to feel the catch loosening
and I wonder what it will be like, when the door swings out,

and I leave this place for home.
______

 

 

What the fox said

Rooster guarded his white brides;
strutted 'round the yard with pride.
Cockadoodle-doo, Rooster,
cockadoodle-doo.

Fox said, "Rooster, let me in.
Let Fox Confessor hear your sins.
Let me save your soul, Rooster,
let me save your soul."

Fox and bird went off alone.
Fox ate meat, spit out the bones.
"Never sin again, Rooster.
Now, where are those hens?"
______

this was meant to be for Mama Zen's Words Count at Real Toads, but I blew the 43 word limit, ending up with 59. Even G Man would say I overdid it!

Ruination

My love complained
that, within my brain,
my heart,
my soft little breast,

behind my deflections,
my affectations,
and all the rest,

she found me unknowable,
impenetrable,
mad, melancholy and inexplicable.

Is it (I asked)
the lazy way I've dressed?
or the time I've spent lounging as a lady may do
of an afternoon in my machine gun nest?

Why now, why this way?
Why when my hair is not looking its best?
Are there any other serpents caught in the lace
that you'd like to get off my chest?

To me, this seems unfair,
this demand of me to share
my moon
my stars
my air.

She said, you are a broken bird
whose beak is too silent and dark
to say the words that speak my mind
or ever hold my heart.
_______

Harpies

Night is a shell we were half out of--
its edge an obstacle at eye level.

We only saw each other's soft side
in those days when the jagged break seemed benign,
like a string of crescent moons made of party paper.

We didn't know we were already growing flight feathers
and talons as large as grizzly claws.

Honey, we were sheathed in the things that killers are made from,
seasoned with the urge to fly or fall,
and of course,
an instinct to claim and use them.
_______

Northampton

"where the coffee is strong and so are the women"

When I visited Northampton
in 2007,
I had never heard of you.

Imagine a covering of leaves,
an inch off the ground,
that seems to be a complete and complicated world
to the crow searching for her supper.
Imagine the unobserved moon overhead,
and all the stars.

In Northampton,
I got a lesbian discount at the little bookstore.
There were two moms pushing a stroller down the street together outside,
and even the mayor was one of us.
My companion, a poet friend, was high on new love
with her rock singer girlfriend.
In a week, they would be at the Red Sox playoff game,
and I would be back home, flying solo in Motown.

In 2007, I had never heard of you,
but, observed or not, the Moon keeps searching for the perfect face to show,
and the stars still cross beside her as they love to do.
What made you look up, sweetheart,
at the same second I did?
Is it possible to measure the moment
when crows remember that the sky belongs to them, too?
_______

for Marian's "Harvest Moon" challenge at Real Toads.

Another Owl And Pussycat

I am not quite rooted in reality,
and yet you seem to be
a little fond of me all the same.

You call your cat Bast, after the Egyptian,
and she subscribes to that mythology.
Likewise, if I show up with Athena's owl borrowed upon my shoulder,
you are keen to hold her and to tell her how fine she obviously is.

The only ring we are ever going to have
is the one made of silver light upon your bedroom floor,
where Bast curls up with her lunatic dreams.
Athena's owl asks for a bed post perch, and never the slightest thing more.

I am not quite rooted in reality, and yet
you always forgive me and share your room,
where my only wish is to be with you
and dance by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
together by the light of the moon.
_______

I have referenced, of course, Edward Lear's "The Owl & The Pussycat" for Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads.

Re: the picture up top: when I was little, every day I would pretend I was some kind of different animal or bird, so much so that the man next door started asking me "What are you today?" I'm an adult now, though, and besides, everyone knows I'm a cheetah. ;-)

Beautiful Indigo

Summer is the stack of dishes the busboy drops--
too bright, too loud, too public;
A harsh-edged sun carves me from my nested silence,
dries me and stitches my mouth shut--
I choke on the songs I would have sung, come fall.

If I could kiss ice, I would.
If I could teach the clouds a good strong gray, I would.
If I could split November into wings, and fold them,
I would send myself into a steep dive
and kill summer with a single sudden strike.

All of this is because I miss your voice.
All of this is because you are too far to touch,
and too taken to ever be mine.
All of this is because of the skew of the stars,
and the curse of longing that has snaked between my ribs,
forming a second heart, jammed with poems,
a jar for beautiful indigo.

Summer spares me one gift, though she knows how I resent her--
She finds me on the floor, beating my brains with my fist
for the poems that refuse to come.
She gives me something--
not the thing I need, but still something--
light through blue lace,
making delicate, shifting patterns
on my untouched skin.
_________

bird and bat

bird and bat both claimed the sky,
and each to that element kept--

except one by day and the other by night,
in nest or cave where they slept.

bird had no fur, and so, to keep warm,
began to sing and sings yet--

bat heard her song in his cellar of stone,
but bat couldn't sing, and so, wept.
_______

Double

There are stupid women everywhere--
thick as pigeons on every sidewalk;
if you step on one she will try to lift her snapped neck
to kiss your boot heel and make it better.

I am not like them,
any more than a tigress is like a turnip.
I am nothing like those women laid out on the berber, weeping,
as if they were human carpet runners in the rental house of Love.

I have perfected the art of being solitary.
I cup my hands under the good sturdy faucet of just-enough.
You can lean on my doorbell all day, caress it like a clitoris, 
but I will stay in the far room, as bored as a blind Burmese.

Once, though,
in the months after Us,
when I spent my time plying puny needle and thread
building swaying rope bridges to find my way around the bomb-scatter of my heart,

I wept for you like a child.
I kept your last message on my machine until a power outage erased it.
I took myself for long walks and was jostled by strangers
who hurried through and past, like bad news from a Ouija.

Sometimes they looked like you,
and I would coo to them,
from my broken throat
like an imbecile.
_____________

for Karin's "entwin(n)ed" prompt.

 

Envoys

There was Campbell's soup in the cupboard.
Velveeta cheese.

TV spoke the expected language.
Street signs were green.

13 years together. Innocents. Envoys.
Futures negotiable. Like toys.

As we bargained the trappings,
our Masters sacrificed us.

How fooled we were
by the familiar, my dear.

We didn't know how foreign we'd become,
or that the well-meaning die here.
________

Siobhan

Siobhan the neighborhood Goddess
makes cupcakes out of kerosene
and frosts them with a cigarette lighter.

What that girl won't do next.

It was nobody's birthday,
but still--
the mix, the bowl, the eggs with their soulful yellow eyes.

Siobhan picks up frequencies in her fingers.
If she boxes your ears,
you'll hear music.

Everybody out,
the food is on fire!
But wait...
wait...
the only way out is to overspill our sweet white skins.

Siobhan the neighborhood Goddess
is an Irish girl.
Cops and firefighters jump from every picture frame.

Now comes the miracle--
the little paper baking cups in their thousands
rise as fire birds!

Siobhan lifts her hands,
and they recognize their song
at once.
_______

image by laurent chehere. 

"When Limpid Light Upon Mine Eyes Shines Weary" by Pontificus Henry Bookfield, 1892

How blah, the blah of the Immortals,
When blahs spread ever blah-like
O'er sylvan blah and hellish blah alike!

Blahs, doth blah emblah us
To take up Blahian blahments,
Even as Blah himself did
In that oft-blahed time,

E'er blah set the human heart
Against its very blahhood?
Blah again, Blahnanians! Blahlujiah! Excelsior!

Note: Believed lost for more than three decades, a nearly illegible copy of "When Limpid Light Upon Mine Eyes Shines Weary" was discovered at the bottom of Lady Philpott-Tewksbury's handbag when she expired from split ends in 1933. Her nephew, Aldous Tewksbury Smythe, painstakingly restored P.H. Bookfield's legendary poem. Unfortunately, he died fifteen minutes after completing the restoration in 1976. The beautifully restored manuscript now hangs in the British Museum of Interesting Debris, where it can be viewed and admired by all.

A 55 for the G Man.   

A Vulpine View Of Common Maxims

(in 40 words)

"A bird in hand..."

I got
no
hands.

"A stitch in time..."

one
ring,
twelve crows.

fox by flock,
sleepin' on the
snow.

"Which came first...?"

church
or
stones?

good books stacked,
heavy and
black.

look quick, child,
foxy smile.
________