Revision Disruption

 
Yesterday I heard some things
I’m glad to know: one poet votes
for the short lyric—ten lines!
—no chaff. Say it and end it.

Another sprinkles movie titles
all through his work, and songs,
mixing anything with “Moon River.”
He mentioned going to Fred’s

for a lobotomy, a supermarket
we don’t have here. I’m careful
not to say “Nine-item quick-line”
more than once per book: a kid

in a class I taught at Juvy once
wrote it and I fell in love and stole it.

*

Birding Is Listening

 
I’m not the only one here, don’t forget
about cedar waxwings.
Remember the ghost of your mother,
smiling, dishtowel always
thrown over her shoulder. It used to snow
in March, but no longer,
not this year, the climate is finally…
Photinia leaves turn red
in spring, weird phenomenon. On Merlin,
the bird app, today, a ruddy
trio: Red-tail, Red-winged Blackbird, Ruby-
crowned kinglet. I’m not making
this up, it’s too boring a story. You can bet,
but it’s a quick way to lose
two hundred dollars. The app works best
when you watch the screen
and see what sounds it’s ID-ing. Looking
into the trees teaches you less.
Wind moving the new growth is distracting.
Bless your sharp eye and
hearing while you still have them. Bless
what’s left of your patience.

You already know my grandmother counted
flamingos. She had no time
for stupid questions. I sewed the cotton
bags she dropped the birds into
headfirst, fresh out of those mist nets. Then
the bands, the weight and length,
her breath on their chests to spread the feathers
and gauge their fat. A plastic
straw from Howard Johnson’s with more
in the glove box to blow
through. On birds, fat is good, they’ll make it
wherever they’re headed.
One way or another, some fine Tuesday morning,
you’ll make it there, too. Fly away, fly away.

*

Night Music

 
Underneath the thick static
of tinnitus that rises in me
more loudly after dark, here
on the couch with the door
cracked open so I won’t miss
the first notes of incoming
rain, suddenly an owl high
up but close. Two stuttered
hoots and one plain is Great
Horned, I think. Pausing,
repeating. Calling its name,
or mine. Calling everyone’s
name. And then quiet, or gone.

***

(Featured image from Pexels)