O, March —
mercurial & a-brim with bluster
Encompassing
emotions’ scope, depth, & wide,
sweeping swings
Animate
Empathic
Passionate & weeping aloud
the world’s griefs,
shouting its humble victories
Accept me –
nearly as buoyant,
at turns razor-edged &
tearful in my seclusion;
your mortal expression,
your devotee.
I am yours.
— C.Birde, 3/22
“Do you not yet know?
How I cherish you?
In every bud
& feather
& tuft of fur?”
Her words lifted
from the earth’s
flowering dream.
“As I long
to be cherished
by you?”
— C.Birde, 3/22
Magnolia –
tipped tight in white-
wax buds,
Arboreal candelabra
awaiting Vernal
flint & tinder’s
strike.
— C.Birde, 3/22
I, a white-masked cipher curled
above the rusted pump within
old wisteria’s protective weave
& tangle,
I, a shadow leaning out beyond
the curtain of dry shadows’ twist
(feel the subtle separating prick
of pinfeathers’ growth forming
& transforming)
My bent neck lengthening from
hoary vines’ obscuring traceries
to better see beyond the mask’s
silk-ribbon-tassled boundaries
through soft-tumbled dark,
Two girls rapidly approaching,
two pairs of eyes wide-open
in faces upward tilting, &
two pairs of small hands lifting,
cupped & empty,
(to be filled? or hopeful offering?)
I, stretching further from wisteria
above the pump’s fixed drip drip
dripping to peer, beak-mouthed,
at splayed moth-pink palms
My auriculars hearing the voice
that scolds & calls from whence
the two girls emanated
My own clear-sighted eyes blinking,
behind the white mask seeing
their reluctant turning,
small hands falling slack against
their sides like dimmed clusters
fading
My cipher-self retreating to roost
concealed from undesired view
in wisteria’s curtaining tangle,
as the Scold approaches,
Folding new-feathered wing-arms
long against ribs & hips
(mid-transformation)
Reaching keen, claw-taloned tips
back toward the coverts of upper-
& undertails,
toward stub-tailfeathers’ oh-so-slow
inevitable forming
I, receding back into embracing
shadow & vines’ hushed rustling
while the abandoned pump drip
drip drips in trickle diminished,
yet always, ever flowing.
— C.Birde, 3/22
Side-by-side-side,
three doors reside deep-
set in the flock-papered
wall –
charcoal,
green,
scarlet;
each framed in carved
white painted wood.
Open –
slowly –
the charcoal door…
descend a shaft
of cinderblocks &
open-tread stairs
where below –
thickly wreathed
in coiling smoke –
a rust-&-iron cauldron
of daunting girth
bubbles unattended,
waiting,
waiting to be stirred…
Back upstairs,
the green door waits…
creep down to find
a bright potting shed
where two cruel men
shift sharpened gazes
from a downcast girl
(she trowels dark earth
into cracked clay pots,
her denim overalls
streaked in the same);
in gleeful anticipation,
they seize upon their
new target with words
deriding & laughter
scraping up the stairway
(under the unseen
spider’s nest)…
Away,
away –
& firmly close the door.
One remains,
one only –
a shining scarlet mystery
waiting in plain sight –
unaddressed,
unapproached,
unaltered.
All potential wittingly
ignored.
— C.Birde, 3/22
Peregrine scrawls
with wingtip, cry, & talon,
inscribes blue-breasted
sky
in spirals
of concentric pattern,
dives,
drives Red-tail,
with outsized insistence,
persistently
a – w – a – y.
— C.Birde, 3/22
Blue Jay relays
news
of his poor
bruised
broken heart,
mewing
from oak tree’s
boughs…
Abide,
empyreal cousin –
the morrow stirs
with hope
of Spring.
— C.Birde, 3/22
Nightjars & Damselflies 