By noon, the crickets are back to normal speed, but the honey in the jar retains its new-found stiffness. The cicada chorus swells & dwindles, a metallic surf, & the field hums with bees wallowing through goldenrod. On this coolest of summers, my house has been painted a blinding white, like the bed of a lake that vanished into the clouds, leaving only its salt. I look down: a carrion beetle scuttles over the portico bricks right up to my front door & goes all along the bottom looking for an entrance. Maybe it’s lost, I say to myself. You can’t put too much stock in insects.
What are the crows really up to?
Subscribers must click through to see the poll.
Quoting myself
Peace without children, yellow field
where I dissolve, finally, into a murmur of bees.
The poppies’ sea-green pods
swell like thought-balloons in the comics,
each one empty except for an asterisk.
I’m taking this opportunity to get in touch with my roots, said the wind-thrown tree.
The aging transport ship
floats motionless
as the Newtonian surface of what
they still sometimes call outer space
dissolves around it.
On the next to last boxcar, in neat black letters:
NATURE WILL WIN.
Then the flashing orange light receding around the bend.
A random selection of quotes (and one paraphrase) from the “Poems & poem-like things” archive. Sometimes when the words don’t flow and writing seems impossible, it’s useful to remind myself that I have come up with a few odd and interesting lines, lord knows how.
New theory questions why we sleep
This same screech owl
was trilling at 4:00 p.m.
from across the field.
Water from the tap —
it’s still moving when I drink it.
I trembled like that once, too,
after days without sleep.
I felt invincible.
Gray fur spreads
through the coffee grounds.
I’m bleary-eyed again.
*
For Read Write Prompt #89: it came from the news.
(Update) Other responses are here.
Admonition
Video link (RSS subscribers must click through)
There’s also an accompanying image at my photoblog. I’m not sure what the species is here, nor why they’re attracted to this bucket in which brushes covered with latex house paint have been cleaned out. If anyone can enlighten me on either score, please leave a comment.
This was shot with my regular digital camera (in the heat of the moment I forgot I had a camcorder), then speeded up to about twice the actual speed. I extracted, cleaned up, and selected a portion of the audio track — annual cicadas in full whine — to combine with my recitation. I dashed off the poem under the influence of alcohol for authenticity’s sake. Here it is, for the benefit of those on dial-up:
This is no moon, my poet friends.
Those are no crickets.
That cloying scent doesn’t come from a flower.
Whatever you’re trying to quench, it isn’t thirst.
A hollow hemlock
A hollow hemlock:
peering out is more fun
than peering in.
*
I start looking
for a kite string —
the motionless vulture.
*
Thursday’s hurricane
sings softly
in my screen door.
*
The house he grew up in
long vanished,
he brings a lawn chair.
Family Restaurant
Underneath the spoon’s
small lake of chowder
she fears her face
is still staring back,
upside-down, like
some girl in China,
& depending on the angle,
either outlandishly skinny
or outlandishly fat.
She shuts her eyes
& quickly shoves it in.
“Delicious, isn’t it?”
her mother smiles
from the other side of
their round, round table.
__________
In response to a word prompt at Read Write Poem (from which I used only the first word, “spoon”). Read the other responses here.
Editor’s Lament
I gathered my thoughts in lieu
of other sustenance. They were
like craneflies to a phoebe:
mostly legs & wings.
I kept pausing to clear my throat.
I had no company but the stick
the stock the stack of unlovely poems.
And I who had been
such an awkward ugly kid,
I who knew nothing about the fine
points of grammar or literary theory,
marked them up with
a cheap ballpoint pen
and emailed rejection notes
to each of their hopeful authors:
Didn’t make it we’re sorry
best of luck in placing them
elsewhere…
I chewed as carefully as I could,
but one or two nevertheless
did not go gently. Ten hours later
there’s still a feeble fluttering
in the pit of my stomach.
Reading the Field Guide
1. Rusty Blackbird
Euphagus carolinus
Rusty only in the fall;
usually suggests a short-tailed Grackle.
Male, spring: A robin-sized blackbird
with a pale yellow eye.
Note, a loud chack.
“Song,” a split creak like a rusty hinge.
River groves, wooded swamps, muskeg.
2. Scissor-tailed Flycatcher
Muscivora forvicata
A beautiful bird; pale pearly gray,
with an extremely long scissor-like tail,
usually folded.
Sides and wing linings salmon-pink.
The young bird with a short tail
may suggest Western Kingbird.
Voice: A harsh keck or kew;
a repeated ka-leep;
also shrill kingbirdlike
bickerings and stutterings.
Habitat: Semi-open country,
ranches, farms,
roadsides,
wires.
3. Sanderling
Calidris alba
A plump active sandpiper of the outer beaches,
where it chases the retreating waves
like a clockwork toy.
Summer plumage: Bright rusty
about the head, back, and breast.
Winter plumage: The palest sandpiper;
snowy white below, pale gray above
with black shoulders.
4. Black Skimmer
Rhynchops niger
Black above and white below; more slender than a gull,
with extremely long wings.
The bright red bill (tipped with black) is long
and flat vertically; the lower mandible juts
a third beyond the upper.
This coastal species skims low,
dipping its knifelike mandible in the water.
Voice: Soft, short, barking noises.
Also kaup, kaup.
5. Whip-poor-will
Caprimulgus vociferus
A voice in the night woods.
When flushed by day, the bird flits away
on rounded wings like a large brown moth.
Male shows large white tail patches;
in female these are buffish.
Voice: At night, a rolling,
tiresomely repeated whip’ poor-weel’,
or purple-rib, etc.;
accent on first and last syllables.
6. Black Rail
Laterallus jamaicensis
A tiny blackish rail with a small black bill;
about the size of a bobtailed young sparrow.
Nape deep chestnut.
Very difficult to glimpse, but may be flushed
by dragging a rope over the marsh.
*
Found poetry from Roger Tory Peterson, A Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America, 4th edition. Some text and italics have been omitted, but nothing has been added.
Field guides are reference books, written to be skimmed. Since the books must be portable, the prose is economical in the extreme. But forced concision can lead to inadvertent poetry, as I think these examples show. (This is another post that began on the Found Poetry forum at Read Write Poem.)
Charm
On a moonless night in August, under the gourd-rattle din of katydids, the forest floor is dotted with blue-green lights, dim as glow-in-the-dark toys an hour after lights-out: foxfire. I grope toward one at my feet, trace the shape of the log, then break off a glowing nubbin. It’s soft & flexible, & illuminates only the thinnest circle of the hand in which it rests. I slip it into a pants pocket, thinking I’ll show the others, but when I get back, somehow I can’t bring myself to mention it. It doesn’t seem right to parade such a recondite thing as if it were a trophy. A day later, it sits hard and shriveled like a dead ear atop my computer monitor.
I dream I’m sick
& wake to find myself well.
The tree full of birds.