Bird Hymn

And so the murmuration of starlings
descended upon the house.

They swept at its roof, shingles, and siding
like a corrosive liquid—cawing, morose.

When all had landed, packed feathers in tow,
atop the roof, lining the gutters, brimming the chimney, a silence came.

A swelling in the atmosphere, the absence of sound
somewhere far off, a barometer ticking back the visage of time.

But from the door comes a man, as it always is.
He is clad in a tattered robe—coarse face, lines engraved

as though he were carved of limestone.
With a bow, he greets the gray sun and black birds.

Their whole heads twitch when they watch him;
their eyes are refractive.

They have made a deal, the man and the starlings.
In the mornings, they will come and sing him a song.

And the man will wake, take comfort, remember
the arid tinge of breath, and continue his ritual.

In the evenings, the man will come and climb their trees.
He will tuck each of them in and leave the nest undisturbed.

Some nights, the ones the starlings prefer,
he, too, will sing a song.

It will be a whisper, a resonance containing the DNA
of all life—nether, unfurling, as he climbs down and goes to sleep.

Deutschland III

I caught myself laughing several times yesterday (and today). Once you step off the train, you’re in a postcard. It’s hilarious. The view from our hostel looks out over a bulbous, rolling mountain, covered greatly by trees–even though parts have been cleared for skiing and hiking. There is an illusion in the mountains, too, and it’s not hard to spot. Even now, looking out over the porch, the trees look maybe ten feet tall. It looks a short, two minute walk to reach out and touch all of them and step over them like some kind of Atlas turning the tables. These firs and pines, though, are at least one hundred feet tall each.

Each treetop peaks out and brushes against the sky, forming a zipper-line zig-zag from one end of the horizon to the other. And you are sitting there, laughing, wondering where the sky and earth separate.

We went on a hike last evening as the sun was setting behind the high-clouds which seem to just (and maybe they do) apparate.  I sensed eyes in the woods on myself and my party, though I did not say anything. This place is very mysterious. I can see now, why it has spawned many myths and fables… The woods is alive in more than one sense, and while you are in it, you are its guest. Unfortunately, we had to stop our hike early because of the descending night. The trail led ahead further, much further, as steep as it was when we started.

Once night had fully taken over, the moon peeked through the clouds as a glowing orb in the sky. The wind carried wisps of gray before it like a shapeshifting gobo.  ”Wow,” was all anyone could seem to say. It rested comfortably atop the mountain, a few degrees above the tallest pines, and waited.

“Doorgift”

I got home and there was a bowl by my door.
I picked it up and it was full of dead bees,
sprinkled with withering rose petals.
So I poured in milk—2%—
and spooned the contents of the bowl
into my mouth.

I chewed thoroughly
until the bottom pitch swirled
pink and gray, only a wing remaining.

Kathodos

Where I live, you can touch the sky from the ground.
Sodium vapor colors the prints of your fingers
as you scalpel the sky—
sundering the initial incision.

At point-blank range, grass becomes a myth
because we have made a fold. From here,
Atlantis drips chalk-white starlight into the dippers
of the cosmos and each mile traveled
is a hundred hundred lifetimes in both directions.

Tacked-on zeroes have no value, though,
but act as placeholders in the holy places
of the universe. “Trees also reach up like us,”
someone once said, “but their roots
keep them tight to the soil.”

Where, by day,
we play and toil.

Photo by Tim Stone

Work in Progress Poem no.4

“Arbor”

Roots assimilating upwards
into a trunk,
bulging & contorting
like the first time we made love—
whatever that means.
Bark abrasive & smooth,
rough but harmless,
like the taste of your name on my tongue:
pungent as cinchona
though the memories are sweet as
the eucalyptus sap I was.

Up your trunk to all your branches;
my hands, your watery lifeblood
caressing your chest and limbs yielding
explosions: beads of sweat on your brow
& below your clavicle—
A youthful and naïve display.
Pollination.

The tree, too, remembers youth.
By growing malignant knots in its vascular cambium,
sun-scathed sides,
displayed in scars of black and white
& sagging roots at its base
above & beneath the dirt.
We, too, remember that summer
by our burgeoning distance
& the bitterness now between us.

Yet the tree still grows.
Were you and I not watered?