Blues & Calicos

 Exes should have to wear a bell

like blues and calicos, so us birds can fly.

But all right, I'll handicraft a smile,

me in the role of a civilized adult when we 

happen to cross paths.

Raise a glass to the past--

vinegar was wine once,

so drink up,

you little arched-back pussycat.

Baseball

 He wore a felt hat

for his early morning beach walk-- an old man as regular in his habits as any tide. He moved slowly, carefully, in incongruous leather shoes under an anvil sky. Later, the oddest thing-- he sat on the sand as if resting, but his shoes were gone and he was as dead. His felt hat had fallen nearby cockeyed, between a cracked shell and a dead fish with a blackened hole in the crown about the size of a cold drink coaster or a baseball.

The Days Left Behind

I asked the mourning dove

where to find the days left behind. 

"In the dew," she replied.

"In the wild grass

 on the slope beside the river.

Hurry," she warned. "Winter already whispers."

I asked the vulture

where to find the days left behind.

"In the fire pit," he replied.

"In the ashes 

full of hands and faces.

Go slowly," he warned. "They will wait."

I asked the falcon

where to find the days left behind.

"In my nest," she replied.

"I used them

for my children, bald and bottomless.

Go now," she warned. "My talons are teachers."

I asked the gentle mourning dove.

I asked the grim vulture,

but the lesson lay

at the feet of the falcon

in a slurry of time, need, and blood.

Grackles

 The grackles have returned

because Detroit is not San Juan Capistrano and they are not swallows. Like Spanish grandmothers wearing mantillas they walk with dignity born of pain at spring weddings and morning funerals. The grackles have returned like circuit riders to small villages carrying bibles and handguns down lonely lanes. I find the finest one and lure him into a dance. We are corn kernels, matching cutlery, a marriage of local beauty and somber bird. The grackles are back and have not killed anyone so far, in the scramble beneath the feeder. They only did that for one summer, years ago when I held a dead fledgling in my palm and the sun shone brightly like a smiling dandy.

Moonbird

 I was speaking, a moaning call,

a spreading gray constellation,

a smoke of words

but you weren't listening anymore.

It is the only language I have.

I live in the interstices

between seed and fruit,

seed and earth,

sea and air,

love and absence.

I have come a very long way, and yet

I am as gray and unremarkable as old lumber.

My love expresses itself inside the earth

and produces a single emissary.

The way is long, the continents pass by.

We meet again only at intervals, but on the same ground.

I was trying to tell you about moonbirds

in their secrecy and their millions.

They seem to vanish, they glide without effort,

but are always there, like love or frailty.

I was speaking, a moaning call,

a smoke of words between sea and air

but you, you love the smell of milled wood,

and weren't listening anymore.

__________

Asters

 Here is a gift--it isn't much

like an analgesic for a lost limb.

Still, the shape of your ears

and the asters in your voice

make me long to become a gardener

or a choralist.

Sadness like bad whiskey takes me when someone speaks

without your regional hard "R"

that made me want to sign on as cook

on a doomed vessel full of haunted sailors.

I love you. I did then and I do still. 

I am a quivering aspen , slender

with black scars, a recorder playing only one tune.

I play it for you, for the shape of your ears, and the sound of your voice.

Paper Pennants

 When I was a young child

my brothers had a hockey game

with metal men

and a marble.

Each team had

a paper pennant

like a challenge laid boldly

before the other teams and the larger world.

I liked the Toronto Maple Leafs

in their sweaters as blue as God's eyes.

The goalie's smile never faltered

though he was hit with the marble a thousand times.

In a dream

I see that goalie coming up the tunnel

in his blue sweater and big brown pads

fearless, changeless, continuously happy.

He takes to the ice

to tend his green mesh net

while we stare up from beneath the surface

like ads or circles or lines or dots.

When I was a young child

there were Red Wings and Rangers

Blackhawks and Bruins

a marble, a goalie, and tilted ice that seemed perfectly fair at the time.

_____