was complicated, but turns out
is. Yes I bought the costly mixture
— not the cheap stuff full of milo—
which the birds kick to the ground, where it becomes
an aggregate of shit and chaff.
But I’d not known you must sweep it up
so as not to spread the pathogens, and space
your feeders far apart and dump
the seed each week and clean the feeder tube with bleach.
And you should whitewash the windows of your home
so the birds won’t crash — you’ll live in twilight
but your conscience will be clear. Otherwise
it’s best not to feed the birds
at alclass="underline" your help will only kill them, has killed them,
I killed them says Wild Birds Unlimited — thanks,
now let me tell you that your wind chimes
turn this place into a gong-tormented sea.
Outside, it’s just another shop in the strip mall;
used to be that this place was a grove
of cedars where I knelt in the purplebrown duff
while something holy landed like a lunar rover
on my shoulder. But listen
to what sings in the grove’s bright stead—
computer chips provide what you would hear here
if they weren’t — mechanical birds
on plastic boughs, always flowering.
Bats
Light leaves the air like silty water
through a filterpaper sieve:
there is a draft created by its exodus
that you might think that if you rode
you too could slip away quite easily.
Is this why they call to mind the thought of death?
Squeak squeak, their song: I want to go
but I am stuck here, it is a mistake
being incarnate; I should be made
of the same substance as the dark.
If they must stay, like us they will be governed
by their hungers, pursuit
without rest. What you see in their whirling
is not purity of spirit. Only appetite,
infernal appetite — driving them, too, on.
Autothalamium
On my wedding night I drove the white boat,
its steering wheel a full yard wide. The dress
bellied out behind me like a sail
as I gripped the lacquered wood
and circuited the bay. The poem
by Akhmatova having already
been read, the calamari and cake
already eaten, I stood alone
in the wheelhouse while my friends
danced to the balalaikas outside
on the deck. I could not speak
for the groom, who left me
to the old motor’s growl
and the old boards’ groan; I also
couldn’t speak for the moon
because I feared diverging
from my task to look. Instead I stuck
my eyes to the water, whose toxins shined
with a phosphor that I plowed and plundered.
And no matter what has happened since,
the years and the dead,
the sadness of the bound-to-happen,
the ecstasy of the fragile moment,
I know one night I narrowed my gaze
and attended to my captaining, while the sea
gave me more serious work than either love or speech.
Red Hat
I followed your red stocking hat
down the river of summer snow
until you carved the turn that stopped us both
with a spray of crystals. A prosthetic leg
lay on the ground, wearing a red
running shoe; we almost took it
to the Lost and Found, but skiing on,
we found more legs
perplexed the mountain. Leg
with thermos, leg with scarf, tableaux
with legs like bowling pins
struck down, though some were propped
erect, against a rock. Art installation
or object lesson? — first the body loses,
then it loses what it puts in place
of what it loses? — I thought
Mount Hood had come to life
to hammer this in. But I kept on
after your red hat and soon was overtaken
by one-legged men, a human wind
I whirled among for just a human minute.
Below, I saw them swallow you, then leave
you with the mountain shadowed on your back,
your red hat wagging, happily, it seemed,
despite the tons of rock you wore.
This Red T-shirt
was a gift from Angus, came with his new Harley
which no ladies deigned to perch their buttocks on
and was therefore sold minus the shirt—
net cost: three thousand dollars, I wear the money
in my sleep. The black braid flowing from the man
herding dice at the Squaxins’ Little Creek Casino
cost me two hundred thirty-five, well worth it
for the word croupier. Work seven months on a poem,
then you tear it up, this does not pencil out
especially for my mother who ate potatoes
every day from 1935–41. Who went to the famous
Jackson Pollock show after the war — sure, she was a rube
from across the Harlem River, snickering
at the swindle of those dribbles until death squelched the supply
and drove the prices up. I’ve known men
who gave up houses worth half a million just to see
the back of someone whom they once bought diamonds.
And I’ve known women to swallow diamonds
just to amplify the spectacle of their being flushed.
The Gutenberg Bible — okay, I get that:
five-point-four million dollars for a book of poems
written by God on the skin of a calf. A hundred years ago
the Squaxins could tell you easily
who the rich man was. He’d be dressed in a red robe
made of epaulets from redwing blackbird wings.
The Wolves of Illinois
When I stopped along the road and climbed the platform that the wildlife people built, I saw the dead grass moving. A darker gold that broke free from the pale gold of the field.
“Wolves,” said the man who stood beside me on the platform. On his other side stood his wife and children, I assumed, dressed as if they’d come from church,
a boy and girl, her scalp crosshatched with partings from her braids. Note that this is my way of announcing they were black
or African American, I am shy not only of the terminology but of the subject altogether
compounded by the matter of words, black being strong
if not so precise a descriptor—
and my being torn about the language makes me nervous from the start. “Look at the wolves,” he told his children
before dropping a quarter in the scope, which I didn’t need because I had my own binoculars
and know the names and field marks of the birds
(like the white rump of the marsh hawk),
so I include “the white rump of the marsh hawk” as it flies over the field.
“Those are coyotes,” I said
with pity for the man’s foolishness? is there a correlation between my knowledge and my pity?
(an inside joke: the marsh hawk’s having been renamed the northern harrier,
though marsh hawk is stronger).
Plus what about the man’s pity for the white girl with coyote in her mouth
— coyote in two syllables, the rancher’s pronunciation,
when wolf is stronger. I wondered whether he was saving face before his family when he said, “No, those are wolves,”