Orbit and Waterfowl

 

Here are we, in our clean white smocks

carrying our easels

waddling in flocks

freed by signatures, approved by weasels

with keys to all the locks.

Gone in a group, out to the duck pond

chicks watching chicks

circling around

like the melt around ceremonial wicks

we the lost, them the found.

We who ate bitter oftener than sweet

who had enough

and beat our feet

into shadows where we flicker and huff

sentient suns in setting concrete.

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for Word Garden Word List--Save Yourself

Music: Gnarls Barkley Crazy 

Benediction

There is a bell in the tower by the lake of the swans

and a blind priest with his stick on the path.

What hymn can matter to these bickering birds?

What pew can comfort the bewildered dead?

The swans trick the dead to come into the lake

and fool the bell to fall from the rope. 

The priest is found on the bench in the dawn

his mouth filled with feathers as if they belonged.

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