Psalm One Psalm for the Wrong Bird
I was a hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. —Matthew 25:35
Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
—Blanche Du Bois, A Streetcar Named Desire. Tennessee Williams
Wind blown scientists
Wearing woolly stocking caps
Reported. Took photos. Made video clips.
Bright yellow bird, tiny,
Coming in for a landing,
Under the cover of a canvas canopy.
Wet and foggy routine morning. Next, a life onboard.
Dark feather-stripes jutting
From fluffed-out jowls. Black-bead eyes.
Beak the color of cantaloupe. Alert! Alive!
Maybe more intense than it intended.
Though wouldn’t you look intense
If you had been blown out to sea,
Farther than your wings and breathing gear
Were meant to take you?
Wouldn’t you, a bird who usually mixed it up
Between land and sea,
Choose that floating haven
With those windblown beings
You might have, previously, seen?
Of course, you would.
For one so tiny in a sea so huge,
a whale-research-boat would do.
The bird, aglow and vivid,
Never paled. Its exhaustion had to be
Hypothesized, then proven,
By a bird-identifier app,
As one who had gone too far.
It was the wrong bird
In the right boat.
After trial and error,
Fresh water provided,
Ingenuity shown
On the part of both species,
The stocking-cap solution evolved.
Darkness, dryness, warmth
Allowed the bird to rest
Throughout the bouncy journey
Back to land.
Safe enough
To close its eyes,
The bird burrowed in.
Even after the return,
Shown familiar trees and
Blooming bushes,
The bird stayed in
The stocking cap
Just an instant longer
Before it flew.
Wouldn’t you first pause,
Look back?
Of course, you would.
Tiny in the vast
Black void of space,
You know you are a stranger,
Dependent on kindness.
A pause is thanks.
Psalm Three: Sea Eagle, Psalm for the Weary
The house I rented faced the beach. I drove in late, woke up early.
Empty as the coffee cup beside me on the deck, I was nodding off, unread newspaper in my lap. Fog was backing up, headed out to sea. Mid-morning on its way, already. Watching without seeing. All the birds out sweeping. Winging, dipping, diving, dancing. Along, above, near, far from the water. The changing angle of the sun forced me to move, a muscle or two. I rose from the chair, then sat down again. With my rising, a sea eagle must have broken from its rounds. A shadow crossed over. A thump, a weighted sound, occurred. I looked up. The bird perched on a beam extending from eaves. The power and exertion of flight still alive in the air around its feathers, brown and white and black on black. Flying, sweeping, dipping, diving—The bird is exhausted, I thought. I did not move. Winded, beak slightly open, it took a quick side-eye look at me. Fluffed its feathers, the slightest lift. Then the gray shade of its eyelid lowered like a cloud. I closed my eyes, received its blessing, offered mine. We shared our rest.
Post-Election Night, circa November 2024
The old ram stands looking out over rockslides, stupidly triumphant. —Grendel by John Gardner
Onions and garlic now grow in my armpits.
They serve me as thorns serve a rose.
Leave me alone while I quote, and I howl.
Too late to read Tarot cards. Please do not ask me.
My own linty pocket has twelve index cards—
Notes for the papers I never did write.
I will throw them tonight in the weak firelight,
The way gamblers throw dice & witches
Throw bones. Blindly, as bats hang nearby.
I will wail with Agave in Bacchae, take out a lease
On Eurpedes’ tale: Complete was her blindness.
Until the catharsis. Rancid and oily, my voice.
This cave, my faintly wet-dog familiar.
My pose, a belligerent crouch.
Defeated resister-persister once more.
Mise-en-Scène 1944
We are born with the dead. They return and bring us with them. —Little Gidding. T.S. Elliot
I was an idea of bright golden light.
My mother in labor, on ether, and telling a tale:
My father’s young brother, the one she loved most,
blown up in explosions of German tank-guns.
I was an idea of bright golden light.
The nurses weep with her, a curtain of tears,
The doctor attending with solemn regard.
Their war memories flooding their hearts.
I was an idea of bright golden light.
The audience waiting. My debut delayed.
My father in uniform, train running late.
Wet snow is clinging to his hair, to his coat.
I entered the world on that dark Christmas night.
My mother embraces him; I wave my hand.
They wrap me in blankets and carry me home.
A very old story gets told once again.
