Not About Birds
for Adam
Who can rhapsodize on starlings
squeaking like oily dead-eyed refugees,
whispering a soft rain of shit
onto cars from trees fidgeting
with disgust? No, flowing sculptures
synchronized (by what, a Supreme
Choreographer?) in a sensuous swarm
slow as vast Tai Chi contortions
and precise as sedentary line dances
in totalitarian stadiums
are what make poets sing sublime
about stub-tailed, greasy greenish black
speckled starlings. Winged lizards
whose hearts pump hot, birds
are just where I let passions go free
to fidget up their own thoughts.
“Pie-lee-ated,” the birder poet broke
in to correct “pie-lated,” bringing
the bird as subject and herself as theme
back from John Brown’s pterodactyl
visage in his last gaunt photo,
and my unsaid thought was let’s call
off your whole fucking thing called
poetry in scary quotes that presumes
a starling nesting in the wall
of the computer alcove mimicking
the you’ve-got-mail jingle
means to reach out to us, soul to soul.
Birds ignore mocking birds.
I should have said it. I say in now.
squeaking like oily dead-eyed refugees,
whispering a soft rain of shit
onto cars from trees fidgeting
with disgust? No, flowing sculptures
synchronized (by what, a Supreme
Choreographer?) in a sensuous swarm
slow as vast Tai Chi contortions
and precise as sedentary line dances
in totalitarian stadiums
are what make poets sing sublime
about stub-tailed, greasy greenish black
speckled starlings. Winged lizards
whose hearts pump hot, birds
are just where I let passions go free
to fidget up their own thoughts.
“Pie-lee-ated,” the birder poet broke
in to correct “pie-lated,” bringing
the bird as subject and herself as theme
back from John Brown’s pterodactyl
visage in his last gaunt photo,
and my unsaid thought was let’s call
off your whole fucking thing called
poetry in scary quotes that presumes
a starling nesting in the wall
of the computer alcove mimicking
the you’ve-got-mail jingle
means to reach out to us, soul to soul.
Birds ignore mocking birds.
I should have said it. I say in now.
