The Stag At Evening

There is the stag at evening,

the careful doe at dawn.

In between, bewildered stars

and night-black crickets whose song is sawn.

I am the woman whose silver hair

is with a red rag tied.

Under the step, a queening cat

hides from the husband of the bride.

I bake loaves and new red bricks.

I sing but never talk.

A lonely moon my trembling hen

will cradle close and hex the hawk. 

There is the crow at evening,

the raucous jay at dawn.

In between, bewildered stars

and night-black crickets whose song is sawn.

______

For The Sunday Muse.

My Kept Crow

My kept crow
collects paper stars, ribbons, various weathers
stolen from the top-shelf box
in the locked room
where I keep what I must forget.

Here is my nun's cell in its spare austerity.
My kept crow comes to my hand,
and I see myself in his tilted eye.
His gift is vertigo dreams
where, at last, I let go of balance
and approximate flight as sleeping dogs and suicides do.

In riven night, I arise
--as my crow would understand--
and go to him, my dark swain, my confessor.
He gives me paper stars, ribbons, various weathers;
I leave him with a bauble
red, meaty, useless
to pull apart.

My kept crow
is kind in the gray-white ash of morning.
He makes no insistence that I rise,
though he sees my open eyes,
my open bleed,
and the open window that shows his free brothers
and mocks our combined, if pretty, superfluity.
________

60

I live at Number 60 and have, through industry and dispensation,
made it onto the day roster at the rock factory
where we build birds to which we attach small personal compositions
which can be read after they come through your window on arced trajectory.

I was born in a nest in a mailbox, lo these many years ago,
delivered by a newsboy who pedaled his bicycle out of Hell to help me.
Mother only bled a tiny drop of Freon, but complained that he smoked;
she could smell it on his rags and anyway, he wasn't a DuPont, now was he?

Carrying around an hourglass, I fell in love with one man and a dozen women,
tilting my head up, offering them chickens, Cokes, anything,
as I ran alongside the bus on tip-toes, wearing a prom dress, stoned and winning,
until it was discovered that I was just loud and starving, like any fledgling.

Let's skip to the chase, shall we? I love you. You're the last.
Give me your disease, I'll spit stones and build a house all hammer and tongs,
where we'll live when I quit the factory and you quit on life, wearing a white dress
as beautiful as any bird in the sky, every bit pitched and gorgeous as my songs.
_______ 

 

Black Bird In A Blooming Tree

I am a black bird in a blooming tree.
I am a spell bag suspended on a bright string cord.
I am a confession left incomplete,
spoken in a voice as soft as the turning stars.
_____

PS--under the heading of boring minutia, March marks my 7 year blogoversary.

Crop Duster

She fell out of the crop dusting plane--
chemicals may, in fact, have had something to do with it.
She was certainly high.
She may have been lit.

She threw herself, a bouquet, at the world.
Here comes a blossom,
a real live flesh and blood
girl.

There were no stairs.
Had there been, she could have done her best deb walk,
descending photogenically
from blue
to bloom
and from sky
to stalk.

Okay, so it was me, on my way down from wing-walking of an afternoon.
I thought I saw you below me, among the vines,
eating a tomato and reading Whitman.
It could have been you.
It could have been chemistry
or kismet
or my eyes playing tricks.

Anyway, every time I breathe,
my blood turns from moody jay to calling cardinal.
That is why I had to come and kiss you, honey,
even if I had to fall.
_______

Book/ Lover

I was keen to find God,
but books were closer at hand;
so I kissed words through indigo, blue, azure, 
and on until daylight.

If only your shirt were on the chair,
and your body next to mine in the soft dip of my bed;
honey, if you were close at hand,
then I wouldn't need books at all. 

 

Advice

I was a chattering child
living in the Sturm und Drang
until a jealous dark star filled my mouth with snow and silence.

There I stayed, a drift with nothing to say
for decades and donkey's years,
feet nailed to the floor to prevent St. Vitus' Dance.

Though silent, I was not stupid--
I hid my heart in the hollow of a tree
until such time as I could own the fever, 
like a yogi or a bush doctor.

Over ages, slow as a slat-leaked barrel,
I incubated language inside my teeth;
each word sharp as truth and long as lies.

I pulled the nails up inside my feet,
until I had claws, and when I finally moved,
it was under a sign-moon, quick as a curse.

I spat out the snow and my mouth learned new tricks--
there were the poems I garlanded from asters and barbed wire.
There were the women who listened, and whom I kissed.

Long ago, I went back to claim my heart from the tree,
and bargained with the guardian owl for a fair price
and her share of a summer night.

I gave myself a name, and the name means "beloved".
From that day until this, I have walked up and down upon the earth;
the snakes know me and hush their hiss.

Still, for all that, here is what I have learned,
and it is a woman's lesson, to be kept in a locket,
in a trunk, in secret, against bad fortune when it comes in threes:

Remember, girl,
that silence may still have its moment.
Remember the bird who can hide your heart,
and when the wind swings down and the moon goes dark,
remember you can run.
Remember 
you can run.

_______

top image "In The Woods 2" by onkami, both images found on weheartit.com

poem idea inspired by the Catie Curtis song "Run", which I can't find a video of, but the lyrics can be found HERE.

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.