Canary (Online) December 2014
--Part 1 previously published (April 00) at New Works Review--
1.
Wheeled glossy-wing'd and black
Corvus Cornix, Corvus Corax
to Home in golden Tamarack
this cold day in space & sad
when the sun goes down these hills
Merge here wood & water
inland, hillbound streams
dreaming driftwood beaches
along the forested seaboard;
merge green & grey the conifer
and elm stands, gazing, down
where fine white waterlace
fans flat rockface & falls
Melancholy in this mist land
The Raven and The Crow
2.
Two days back in Time
Birds, massing:
Put wing to Northland air you riveted,
strung out & Against the sky:
pull Winter in behind you
Like a vacuum:
going, and nowhere.
Somewhere trees reach, waiting.
Cornfields standing, left, amazed—
frost light'ning stalks & leaves
(where air has touched with ice
the leathered scarecrow's fame)
the stillness of the moment
Flight Flight
3.
Pinpoint: the Northern Star a sky away:
Winter on these hills
Where the eye looks
upward, nothing moves—
above the landscape
nothing is moving through
still air
Bare these treelimbs in extreme
starlight, frostbitten in air.
What sun there is
is cold
Still this greatcoated space
under white inches of muffle
Empty these skies