Category: poetry

Sappy green canopies and umbrellas and a roof.
Lush, sturdy pine branches with stick walls.
Little big homes made of twigs, mud, hair.
New babies tucked into siblings' warmth.

Gray Mom reappears with three acorns 
and a fluffy, speckled off-white mushroom.
Tail the size of her body,
rising high in alert.
The barred owl screams. Mom's ears perk.
She wraps up with her kits until the sun.
Safe.

Above them the crows,
Ma and four hatchlings. 
She flies away from the nest,
then comes back,
then flies away,
then comes back. Earth's worm.
Scream scream scream eat it.
More. 

They, too, tuck themselves in for the night.
Setting sun.
Under Mom's wide black feather blanket.
Away from the owls and the rain and the chill.
Until the morning sun. 

In a tall pine close but far,
owl's nest.
The downy fledgling watches Mom fly
and waits for the flimsy, soft mouse
or the floppy graying lizard.
All through the night. 

With the sun.
and the waking lids
and the morning dew
and Earth's yawn.
It comes.

Not breeze or flutter of birds,
but crashing and clanking and foreign yelling.
Yellow machines aim at the houses
made of twigs and sticks and branches and trunks.

Work boots and fat tires,
lunch boxes and canteens of coffee.
Raspy yelling and Marlboro smoke.
Chainsaws and ripped, dull blue jeans.

Sappy bleeding horizontal trees.
Settling, blinding dust.
Owl flies, crow flies.
Squirrel grabs her favorite and,
in vain
runs.

Down down down the tall pine, 
grabbing with her sharp claws
at the crispy bark
while her little dangles between her teeth.

I took this poem of mine, one of my favorites actually, and made it into a pose poem:

Miss Geller’s Barbados crown circles the other girl’s face, yet blonde, while she bakes. Cod with Ritz. And she watches the dolphins with their accidental grins wave in the waves with their virtual arms and hands at her curious gaze while they suck fish bones from their pebble teeth. The ocean is one and many, while it shows its black at night, sometimes. With its billions of workers who in their grain bodies soften with their grit, the contents of its cupboards. And it sighs at the oohs and ahhs that it hears while the not-noticed is seen once again. Plain gray rocks and little black teeth, broken shells or miniature trees. Chunks of glass, Budweiser. They rub their thumb on the edge, and feel it in their chests, and if the blood does not come, they call the brown compressed sand, that became smooth by its relatives, sea glass. Repeat it. Sea glass. Natures unnatural art. As they walk with their heads down. Hunching to find the treasure or, the fantasy message, in a bottle of ale. The breaths are deeper. Deepest. Loud, full breathing, slow. Long outs. Longer ins, keep some. Lungs’ delight. And the skin somewhat smoother than yesterday, toes and shoulders turn brown under the pink Coppertone and squarish freckles. Roaring hushes the thoughts of what is next and what was before. Wavy steps slow as the end appears. Boat-tailed Grackles wait to take it. Seeds of the sun’s flower, black and oiled like their windy feathers. And the leftovers are gently grabbed by the one-footed gull with her perfectly pedicured toes. Her soft feathers just white flow as she looks into your eyes to see where the next toss will aim, or to know your blues. And she gracefully dangles in the air, singing like a squawking angel, needing no sympathy as she takes turns with her new old friends. The fuzzy, savage cats, smash their young faces on their mate’s as they beg and exist in their fatness of black stripes on brown fur, flicking tails and kneading toes. Dancing for their food, deli turkey or leftover salmon. Their song is like the water’s while the purring and roaring dance and the humans fall for their massive blinking and their hypnotic petition. The velvet deer in the beaten trees twitching her wavy ears hiding in the crooked sharpness living in the death. Waiting for her turn to dine. After the cherub cats and the fliers and swimmers and the ones with the money or the prehistoric glow of the celebrity bird. If I only had a silver fish to drop into your impressive gullet. As you glide by with your russet friends with the same tattered plumage. Not even a side-glance. Maybe you’re praying for your vanishing kind.