Poem for Friday, July 15, 2016

Bird Watching

A crow steps out into the uncut grass
to warm its wings.

A bluebird lands on a windowsill overtaken by kudzu,
vanishes in the vines.

Three blue jays eye the birdbath;
one levitates toward another tree to change positions.

A male cardinal becomes a single flame
streaked against the cloudless sky.

A robin guards her speckled infant eggs
in a nest on a low-hanging limb.

A mourning dove coos in the elms.

An indigo bunting appears as a bright blue flash,
scouts the ground for worms or seeds.

A mockingbird kamikaze dives
to claim a strategic branch.

A wren stubbornly builds its home
in the sealed off corner of the porch.

Two blackbirds glide up and away together,
dissipate like dark mist.

Poem for Saturday, July 2, 2016

Gospel

The brick steps on my mother's back porch stay warm
well into the dark like oven burners set to simmer then
neglected. This summer is pure and proper: the watermelons
are juicy, the leaves curl into the heat. A few days ago, I drove
to the cemetery on a whim to search for my grandparents and
finally found them on the edge where the grass met the asphalt:

        suddenly, the history of this place unfolded
        like a patchwork quilt, the kind once stretched
        across an old country bed where people bled
        in the cloth.

Sometimes, I feel like the night before me is an enormous painting
that I must interpret, derivative of all previous nights until
a new season is born. Sometimes, I think I don't want this anymore 
when I hear the metallic shriek of a lonely train.

Sometimes, I give my eyes to the absence of color, my ears to
the chorus of tree frogs, my gospel.