Bluejays! the same fight
every morning! Why should I write you
another poem?
Bluejays! the same fight
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Category Archives: animal poems
The Obvious Will Never Lose Its Power to Persuade
A dog lying in the sun
looks very wise.
Of course that is only the sun
making her narrow her eyes.
No, it is not the appearance of wisdom
that makes a dog wise:
it’s the fact that she lies
in the sun.
Master, where are your bones tonight?
Master, where are your bones tonight?
I heard the coyotes keening as the moon rose;
and the heavy air brought the scent
of burgeoning prairie grasses.
Summer is coming on fast,
and faster every year.
Master, where are your bones tonight?
You went into the desert, again and again, and then
one night you never came home.
We knew why, we had brought you there—
brought your body and your ghost: your life
had already leaked out of you, into hospital tubes, and was gone.
We left you there in the desert,
to reconcile with the Earth.
I had a recurring dream after you died:
Coyote, as a lark, was playing a reel
on a flute made from your shinbone.
His eyes looked sad and he was dancing
a few feet above the earth.
His eyes looked sad. But—you know—
with Coyote, you never can tell.
In my dream, if it was mine,
summer was always coming on fast, and the prairie grasses
whipped in a playful dance
until I woke. And summer came.
I haven’t had that dream in years.
Just tonight, though, the rising moon caught me wondering—
Where are your bones tonight, Master?
Two crows shared the same treetop
I.
Two crows shared the same treetop…
Nope—
it didn’t last.
II.
Don’t they know there’s a war on?
Stupid cows
in their stupid, green, spring pasture.
III.
You need to slow
the fuck down. Only then
will this poem seem long enough.
Frogs (a round)
Frogs
remain invisible,
even at midday.
How
do frogs
remain invisible? Even
at
midday, how
do frogs remain?
Invisible,
even at
midday–how do,
Frogs?
Reading Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale in California, March 31, 2020
I.
Blithe nightingale, to this far shore unknown—
Who did so flit
In forest shadows knit
Of Lincoln green, in Keats’ day gone by—
Decorously, yet still as wild
As any bird could be in that domestic isle;
So sweetly singing ‘neath the rain-rinsed sky
And in the mottled shade of trees and sheepish clouds,
To conjure reminisces not my own—
Elusive creature! Present now,
Then, in one melancholy moment, gone;
Evocative, allusive and high-flown, eschewing crowds—
One glimpse of thee
I fain would see,
O bird most suitable for poetry!
II.
Here in California, meantime,
it’s the 21st century.
The crows and bluejays and us
have all been shoved
to the jagged edges
of the furthest continent from home.
Outside my door, I hear
the birds debating who’s
going to be the first
one up against the wall
come the revolution.
A flash of Gold or Crimson
A flash of Gold or Crimson
Are such domestic birds!
Whose colors–immemorial–
Have trafficked Human roads.
Hues of Song and Storybook
Of Wealth and Pageantry–
So haunting ’tis to glimpse them here
In the untraveled Green.
— bent stick in the path, ridging
I.
– bent stick in the path, ridging
the dust
where the sun
has been beating down
ten thousand hours
since last it rained
if you were a snake
I’d know
what to do
with you
tip my hat
wish you good hunting.
II.
First a red
tailed hawk
juking from
treetrunk
to tall grass
under the dark canopy
and next I, emerging, see
coyotes
flashing against the sky.
I don’t understand this world
anymore.
Nuisance crow
Nuisance crow
on an old fencepost:
green field behind;
brown hills in the distance;
gravel road,
deadleaf trees,
white sky,
world all around —
when did it all become
not worth a mention?
I fear my sixth decade
will make me an old man yet.
But really they thought it no harm done
All right so it was a bit of a trick
But really they thought it no harm done
To secretly scatter crackers on the lawn
Then send the baby out to frolic
Thus they taught their girl
From her nascency
She was the mistress of birds
And she grew up into the utmost complacency
Knowing they’d come at her beck
And adore her
And be harmless and not peck
And would sing for her
And no one ever thought What will become
Of her when she grows up and leaves home
When she fares into the world all alone
And her pockets mysteriously unfilled with crumbs
Would she hate the birds that kept absent
Or blame them
When the fields and branches of the trees stayed vacant
When she failed to tame them
To what would she ascribe
The usual empty sky
The poor dear the answer remains unclear
But anyhow what can be done about it now
Bag of Anything 