~~~~~~~~~~
BESTIARY
Animals
bleed into
conscience:
deer in the gunsight, sad-eyed
elephant lifting one obedient
foot for the sequined
girl, donkey
harnessed to the slow wheel of his days.
In fable's mirror, nightmare's
jungle, they play us:
kill of the
leopard forked in dry branches,
muted rustle of snake in
November leaves.
Orderly as letters, they
pose in the nursery:
quilted blue
rabbit,
stuffed bear.
Tame us, disinherited brothers, shame
us to mercy,
voiceless moth on the pin, white mouse trapped in glass,
X'd for the scalpel or the planted tumor, all
you clean originals, hawk,
zebra, dolphin.
~~~~~~~~~~
SOLSTICE
Now in our maple a dove is whooing;
caught in the branches, the wind is warm;
somewhere heaven is plotting storm
and the bird's undoing.
Now in the flame of its petals burning,
sunflower praises the gift of sun;
elsewhere petals are all undone,
and the leaves are turning.
~~~~~~~~~~
NIGHT BIRDS
How do they ride so light
into the lightless air
who have no word for night,
who cannot wield or wear
or prize the talisman
of names, or send a spark,
as only meaning can,
into the brutal dark?
By day, I cannot touch
the certainties of birds
for all my compass, crutch,
my Aaron's rod of words.
But they, by night, alone,
drift on God's breath, secure,
whose faith is dumb as stone,
as permanent, as pure.
~~~~~~~~~~
A WINTER WALK
We followed pawprints like cuneiform:
tracks that said "possum" on the page of snow.
I pictured finding something curled up warm
wherever such things go,
but at trail's turning, came upon no burrow
cradling our quarry in the crystal field,
but something smaller, torn beyond all sorrow,
that mercy could not shield.
The tracks we followed on a winter day
for pleasure, for delight in all that moves,
ticked on alone. We took another way.
Blood settled in the grooves.
~~~~~~~~~~
RESIDENTS
Our tree, silenced of leaves, is loud with birds
whose autumn music says a kind of green
lovely for all the strangeness of the words.
We like to think we fathom what they mean,
but they don't speak to us: they're making plans
among themselves, plotting some ancient route
or counting losses real as any man's:
the likelihood of frost, the dearth of fruit,
or more than these. They mirror-image preening
leaves in the wind, fall in reverse toward blue,
as if to say--but who's to know their meaning?
We say they sing because we want them to.
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