Tag: nature

Two on a Raven

Raised on books I dreamed
of hawking and now I want
this raven, to call it
strong to my wrist
with such a longing I once had
to hold a child in my arms

But its magnificence
that black eye black
beak the breadth of it
vast wings open and fold
pause, a thoughtful look

through the glass, me

Unfurl

hope like arugula sprouts
big enough to be seen
from a second-floor window

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cat out and leap-chasing
shadows—sparrow, crow,
flick/sway of still-bare branches

*

water wind-rippled in bird baths
sometimes sun-shimmered, reflecting
on redbud bark

*

that april blizzard and how
we could see again
smooth-swirl snow on rooftops,
dollops on red-budded trees

This winter

is snow on ice on ice on snow
and we know this is metaphor
also, this floundering through drifts
and bleak shivering, a slip and a fall

juncos flit and chickadees
never give up their song, the warning note
for all these branches bent under
their own frozen weight, summer’s broken stems
brittle and glazed

how far down do we hold our love’s roots, the seeds
and is this the winter
that kills them

managing

we whiz along, or grind
jaws tight with effort
to be good and right and
happy

until we explode—
all the mess to clear up
exhausted

screaming and crying and chaos and blood
nearly always
the loom of news vans

we are no more than animals
we fear

while juncos hop along the brick
cat-scattered
squirrel descends fence
walnut bigger than its head
tight in its teeth

brown marmorated stink bugs

as good as any nature center, your office
window. they touch striped antennae. just one,
in the beginning and how they got between
glass and screen and on the second story—
now you count four clinging up down right left, slow
with that deliberate creepy invasion intent.
they have the tell-tale spots and stripes
you can see very well with your hand-lens
of course they fly, but why? you keep watching

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