“Boo” — C.Birde, 10/18
Halloween,
that narrow,
bone-thin,
spectral eve
when we neatly fold
and lay aside
our everyday disguises
and pretend to be —
’til midnight’s peak —
something other
than what
we otherwise pretend
each day
to be.
— C.Birde, 10/18
“Ghost” — C.Birde, 10/18
“Little Green Snakes” — 10/18
Stop.
Just stop.
Don’t hand her another.
She’s too young, does not understand the harm she inflicts.
Each one – gripped in her dimpled, pudgy hands – wriggles, thrashes, droops,
is reduced to a limp length of still-brilliant spring green.
Laughing, she tosses them aside – lifeless; they land
belly up, curled on the flags beneath her high chair –
the first, the second, and the third.
Please – don’t hand her another.
She doesn’t understand.
Just stop.
Stop.
— C.Birde, 10/18
“Wand” — C.Birde, 10/18
These small, sweet wands —
liberally scattered
amongst leaf-fall and weeds;
at curbside and
humble margins —
are sufficient
for
magic.
— C.Birde, 10/18
“Oracle Autumn” — C.Birde, 10/18
All of Summer’s
light —
in diminished height —
angles in Autumn’s
outstretched
arms.
Oracle Autumn.
Astrologer.
Fortune Teller.
Caster of leaves and
stones and runes
beneath the Hunter’s
moon.
Elder twin to budding,
carefree Spring.
Wise,
with haunted eyes
of Winter,
and bruised with
impending memory.
Lovely,
breathless,
quick-silver
Autumn.
— C.Birde, 10/18
“Dinosaur” –C.Birde, 10/18
Small dark apartment. Smaller cramped kitchen. So many stories up. The others mill about with mugs in hand, gather around the tubular-legged formica table. Dressed in pale, loose-fitting clothes, they shuffle like sleepwalkers.
The kitchen’s single window – large, wide, with neither curtains nor panes – stares unblinking, westward, out over a great ravine, toward a ragged bluff on the opposite side. A long, low structure defines the bluff’s subtle shifts in elevation. The structure’s white walls are incomplete in places; it lacks a roof. Slowly, the sun sets, illuminates walls and rooflines in relief. The underbellies of great, dark clouds strung overhead catch fire.
Beyond the building – there, in the fathomable distance – stomps a tyrannosaurus rex. Enormous in size and ferocity and appetite, it tears through the low, roofless building, pulls off great chunks of cinder block, plucks out terrified people…gnashes bodies with its foot-long serrated teeth.
Don’t look…don’t notice…don’t acknowledge the awful danger. Don’t allow the thoughts to twist and form and grow… Don’t look here…Don’t notice us…Don’t hurt us…
Too late.
The fear, like a siren song, trembles upon the still air. The creature turns, glares across the ravine’s expanse, leaps it in a single pump of its powerful hind legs. With a thunderous t h u m p, it lands atop the building several stories up.
Tearing teeth. Sundering claws. The creature pulls apart the upper floors. The ceiling trembles, cracks, lets loose a drift of plaster dust. Formerly a drowsy environment, the kitchen erupts in frantic cries, dropped mugs, and calamity.
The monster digs its way down and down and inevitably down.
— C.Birde, 10/18
“Sweetgum” — C.Birde, 10/18
Shining Sweetgum
sagely scatters
scores
of
seedpods,
spiked & spherical.
— C.Birde, 10/18
“Dorr Mountain” — C.Birde, 10/10
Be strong. Be steady. Be alert. In body, mind, and spirit.
Embody the mountain. Dorr Mountain. Acadia.
Kurt Diederich’s Climb, elder among trails,
shaped with the Park’s founding –
a series of steps and stairs cut from the mountain itself,
connected by packed earth trails
that track those slopes and edges.
The strength of purpose,
the steadiness of planning
required to create such possibility;
the alertness necessary to climb those stairs…
when I want only to look at everything…
everything…
from each angle and every curve, ascending, descending…
trees, ferns, moss, and smooth blush-shouldered stones;
each creature that creeps, leaps, flits, soars;
the great, vast, all-embracing sea-blue sky;
when I want only to inhale everything…
everything…
the clean damp smell of earth and leaf and pine
through every sense and pore.
All surrounding – strength, steadiness, alertness;
this great protruding hip of enduring earth.
A fragment, I move through its peripheries,
through its unquestionable midst…
a flawed splinter of purpose.
And yet, and yet…
here, I am fearless…here I forget…
that the world always (always) seems
bigger, stronger, louder, crueler…
here, I forget the shouts and anger that strips away
convictions, small and large, until I doubt…
Here, I am fearless; here, I don’t hide…
My face mirrors light.
Be strong. Be steady. Be alert. In body, mind, and spirit.
Hold on to that mountain.
— C.Birde, 10/10
“Frog” — C.Birde, 10/18
Caught within the tangle of scratching, leafless forsythias at the road’s edge — that pale, packed strip of gravel, bending, bow-like and away left and right. Beyond the road’s farther edge, where the intrusion of gravel gives way to tumbled brown earth; beyond the earth’s gradual slope and the slim, young trees arranged haphazardly over that gentle declination — a ribbon of glittering blue, a deep lake of still water, its surface stirred by breeze. They have already crossed, slipped through the trees, their hands tracing those slender trunks as they passed, headed for the water, out of sight.
Watching, caught within the forsythias’ whip-wand embrace. Bending forward, doubled over at the waist. Shaking head and hair — gently. The toads tumble earthward, dozens of small dull brown toads shaken gratefully free of entangling hair. Watching them hop and scatter in all directions.
Laughing.
Laughing.
— C. Birde, 10/18
“Bluster” — C.Birde, 10/18
Regardless of direction,
of source,
or intention,
the bluster
effects
us
.
.
all.
— C.Birde, 10/18
“Horsetail Bamboo” — C.Birde, 10/18
Sing —
singly,
in union;
Tooth-edged wings
scraping,
bending,
bowing
in praise —
each night —
of the moon’s
ever-
shifting
aspect.
— C.Birde, 10/18
Nightjars & Damselflies 