89 Birds poems

We watched her grow up. She was the urgent chirper, Fledgling flier. And when spring rolled Out its green She’d grown Into the most noticeable Bird-girl. Long-legged and just The right amount of blush Tipping her wings, crest And tail, and She knew it In the bird parade. We watched her strut. She owned her stuff. The males perked their armor, greased their wings, And flew sky-loop missions To show off For her. In the end There was only one. Isn’t that how it is for all of us? There’s that one you circle back to — for home. This morning The young couple scavenges seeds On the patio. She is thickening with eggs. Their minds are busy with sticks the perfect size, tufts of fluff Like dandelion, and other pieces of soft. He steps aside for her, so she can eat. Then we watch him fill his beak Walk tenderly to her and kiss her with seed. The sacred world lifts up its head To notice — We are double-, triple-blessed.

Feet firmly perch thinnest stalks, reeds, bulrush. Until all at once, they attend my female form, streaked throat, brownness. Three fly equidistant around me, flashing. Each, in turn, calls territorial trills, beckons ok-a-li, ok-a-li! Spreads his wings, extends inner muscle quivering red epaulet bands uniquely bolden. Turn away each suitor, mind myself my audience. Select another to consider, He in turn quiver thrills. Leave for insects. Perhaps one male follows. Maybe a few brood of young, line summertime. Silver Maple samaras wing wind, spread clusters along with mine, renewing Prairie. As summer closes, I leave dragonflies, damselflies, butterflies, mosquitoes, moths, spiders, crickets for grain, see, Sunflower; join thousands to flock Sky— grackles, blackbirds, cowbirds,     starlings— Swarming like distant smoke clouds, rising.

the winged thang built her dream palace amid the fine green eyes of a sheltering bough she did not know it was urban turf disguised as serenely delusionally rural nor did she know the neighborhood was rife with slant-mawed felines and those long-taloned swoopers of prey. she was ignorant of the acidity & oil that slowly polluted the earth, and was never to detect the serpent coiled one strong limb below following her nature she flitted and dove for whatever blades twigs and mud could be found under the humming blue and created a hatchery for her spawn not knowing all were doomed

The robin makes a laughing sound. It makes me stop and look around to see just what the robin sees— fresh new leaves on twigs of trees, a strong, high branch on which to rest, a safe dry ledge to hold its nest. The robin makes a laughing sound. I stop. I always look around.

A Route of Evanescence, With a revolving Wheel – A Resonance of Emerald A Rush of Cochineal – And every Blossom on the Bush Adjusts it’s tumbled Head – The Mail from Tunis – probably, An easy Morning’s Ride –

They've flown south now and one Great Egret fishes the pond as broad-winged hawks begin their migrations, kenneling on thermal currents of wind off above yellowing mountains. Now, snakeweed blooms along the trail choking white and purple asters. A few bleeding leaves fall amidst wilting greenery. Poison Ivy turns red with warning. My eighty-three-year-old mother still argues with my father, twelve years dead. Their hatred reverberates in a back room of my head, rattling memories of my lonely childhood. Their loathing for each other colors all my days with pain. I loved him because he loved me best, but I look like her, my face and spirit tear at each other. Am I the child of hate? A wounded love sprouts like a weed from watery depths, uncultivated, flowers, white and purple, bloom, even in these days of dying leaves. Beyond winter, no one grieves.

A pair of Orpingtons, one blue, the other black, with iridescent necks and fine, ashen fluff cackle through the dark, their damp calls close enough to chafe, a friction with no spark. They settle down to roost, two rests along a stave. Each curls into itself, comb tucked beneath a wing, as the days grow long enough to kindle in each a yolk, the smallest flame of spring.

Speaking of blindness, the man told his one-eyed fiancée, have you heard about the ortolans? Fig-peckers of yellowhammer descent. Thumb-sized or tongue-sized. Kings used to catch them at summer’s end, knife-blind them so that in their darkness they’d feast on millet all day, all night, a break from beetles and seeds, until they grew from one ounce to four. Drowned in Armagnac, plucked, placed in a saucepan, roasted, you eat them whole, so the head dangles between your lips, crunch bones like hazelnuts, underneath the linen napkin you must place over your head to create a scent tent or, so God won’t see your shame. (Proust paired them with sips of Yquem, a sauterne born of noble rot — grapes like ashes, their wet dried in the nick of time, so honeysuckle turns to bitter finish.) Mediterranean salt emerges as flight bursts in your mouth. Imagine yourself a memory, a body full of meal, as Mitterrand must have, eating ortolans eight days before dying, his last illegal act. Fifteen minutes of savoring a supple, burning ball of fat until you exhaust its roast juices. When you finally swallow, you will regret the end of a sensual experience. At least once in your life, you must pay the price for this princely folly.

There is a singer everyone has heard, Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again. He says that leaves are old and that for flowers Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten. He says the early petal-fall is past When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers On sunny days a moment overcast; And comes that other fall we name the fall. He says the highway dust is over all. The bird would cease and be as other birds But that he knows in singing not to sing. The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing.

Twice through my bedroom window I’ve seen the horned owl drop from the oaks to panic the rabbit in my neighbor’s backyard. Last night he paced for an hour across the top of the cage, scrutinizing the can of water, the mound of pellets, turning his genius to the riddle of the wire, while under him the rabbit balled like a fat carnation in the wind. Both of the terriers yapped from their porch but the owl never flinched, pacing, clawing the wire, spreading wings like a gray cape, leaping, straining to lift the whole cage, and the cage rocking on its stilts, settling, and rocking again, until he settled with it, paused, and returned to a thought. And the rabbit, ignorant of mercy, curled on itself in that white drift of feathers? Wait, three years and I haven’t escaped the child I saw at Northside the night my daughter was born, a little brown sack of twigs curled under glass, eyes bulging, trembling in the monitors, and the nurses rolling the newborns out to nurse, and the shadows sweeping the nursery.