A Brief Dispatch from the Anthropocene
sweating in the shade
the boulder and I
I’d shave my head
but it only brings the sun closer
closer still a mob of crows
re-convenes in my ear
iridescent midnight feathers
aimed at an owl
Dikter om ämnet: owl
Dikter om ämnet ”owl” på Poets.by.
Night from the inside (5)
To go for a walk in the woods during the day is to participate in a fantasy of knowing through seeing. The mysterious unknown is pushed back, engendering the desire to keep walking just to see what’s around the next bend. At night, all such illusions fall away. The forest we’ve just walked through retains its essential unknowability. Without darkness, the very possibility of the wild becomes endangered.
From off in the darkness, the sound of a porcupine clacking its teeth. Against what threat, I wonder?
It goes on and on. Somebody doesn’t have much sense.
Night from the inside (2)
pond the size
of a table for four
spring peepers
the distant cry
of a migrant gull
frantic wings
against the window’s
good night moon
I remember how I talked myself out of my fear of the dark at age eight. Or did I? I’ve never been able to watch horror movies — I don’t want those sorts of monsters running loose in my imagination. There are enough real monsters in the news, I say to myself.
Options
war though it be
I have myself an if
an owl is not fit
to see green
or we to see which
tomorrow we conceive
Superb owl, bad call
walking through the churchyard
where people have been buried
in good clothes
I hear the owl again
and do not look
Allusive haiku
whose woods these are
a barred owl asks
nothing of me
The Hollow (32)
the cousin who once
impersonated a bear
tall tree tales
just there
a barred owl used to blink
at the rare car
dim hemlocked light
recalling my childish fear
at a bobcat’s hiss
hemlock refuge
threatened by needle eaters
I avoid looking up
January noon
In the owl’s flight
as in the conifers it left:
that silence.
It’s enormous,
the frozen carcass of a cow
eaten by chickadees.
O trees like forks,
the sky too is a dish
best served cold.
Next Life
The skull whose name was smoke spoke
worm words. Its missing teeth hissed
from the gizzard of an owl.
How odd, I thought, to be a skull
& haunt a body from within!
The air smelled of rotting
leaves; it was October.
Icy feathers began to form
on the edges of grass blades—
the only kind of next life
that made sense to me, stoned as I was.
My gut gurgled polyphonically.
I considered fear as if from a great height.
Bird Watching
If I remember correctly,
It began at the temples.
I thought it most distinguished
Mature, even attractive -
Though it was the foreboding
of things to come.
Over decades, it spread gradually
Over the head, face and chest.
Now I notice it appearing
On my forearm, in ones and twos.
It took away the lustre in my eyes,
Strength in my limbs -
The slowing down of the systems
Is ominous than ever.
It is evening; sitting in my armchair,
I look at the sunlight slanting,
A sound request
Friend, there are certain sounds I love at night,
like the ongoing opera of the crickets,
the one-note sonata of an owl in a nearby tree,
or, should I be lying by the lake, the furious
but curiously calming encroachment and retreat
of the waves, or even the primal, contagious howls
of a thousand wild adolescents at Nelson Ledges,
shouting all night like lemurs,
their brains too stuffed with serotonin to sleep.
But the noises your lover makes with you
would not be welcome to my ears
were it noon in the middle of summer, let alone midnight,
then one-ten, two-thirty, three-fifteen and four.
It’s impossible to sleep when her piercing moans
nearly perforate my eardrum, so please let me know
The Tree
Above, the sky was a bright blue
Clouds, white, swum lazily
Sun shone bright
Breeze blew gentle.
Atop the tree, on the highest branch
A new leaf, slender and green
Soaked in the sun and danced in the air.
Other leaves wished how they could be
At the top, at the very top.
Humming happily to itself, the leaf,
Humming happily to itself
Nothing above me
But the empty, vast sky!
Trembling in glee, the flower buds
Blushed,
Dreaming of the bees