OCEAN STATE POET --- GIVING VOICE
OCEAN STATE POETS
Of Birds and Skies
“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.” Henry David ThoreauOn overcast days,
is it the Gray Catbird
that totes the sky on his back,
wearing a black thunder cloud for a cap?
Perhaps it’s the Northern Cardinal
weaves the horizon with red
at dawn and dusk.
If so, it must be the Snowy Owl
carrying winter’s pale banner
across northern latitudes,
when I yearn for blue skies
dappled in downy clouds.
For now, I’ll sit in the rain,
under my umbrella,
occasionally lowering it and looking
to see which great black bird
is pulling night’s shade
across the heavens
as the sun sets in a swirl of orange
where an oriole is settling in the west.
***********************************
Ghosts and Where to Find Them
It takes a lifetime
for a house to give up its ghosts,
though the dead rarely stray from old haunts.
Decades sitting in the same chair,
the cushion wears the contours
of an invisible presence.
My mother still hears my father
wandering the hallway at night
trying to find his way back to her bedside.
Even in death, he is stricken with dementia,
her memories caught in the gears
of his perseverations.
Water dripping evokes his nightly voids;
the rocking chair sways to his absent rhythms;
the mind, too, warps time and place.
Alive, he thought her his long-dead sister,
his bridge to the present eroding
under collapsing infrastructure.
Will my mother visit me in my dreams
after her bed
swallows her in its wake?
Do the dead also yearn for their loved ones?
We too will fade to ghostly moons
phasing in and out of the memories of the living;
the only afterlife we know,
their memories breathing life
into the next generation of ghosts.
Long Before Us
birds saw the curvature of earth,
knew it was round, mapped the stars
and detected the planet’s magnetic field
to guide them on transcontinental migrations.
Long before us
birds had a map of the world,
adapted to its jungles, plains, swamps,
woodlands, deserts, oceans,
even ice-sculpted Arctic regions.
Long before us
birds had culture, sang
to greet the day, danced to entice mates,
built structures to house their chicks,
taught their young what they didn’t already know.
Long before us
birds lived in harmony with the seasons,
never taking more than they needed,
sowing the seeds of fruit-bearing trees
and pollinating its flowering plants.
Long before us
birds survived earth’s calamities,
its droughts, storms, fires and floods,
even the asteroid strike
that killed off most of life on earth.
Long before us …
“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.” Henry David ThoreauOn overcast days,
is it the Gray Catbird
that totes the sky on his back,
wearing a black thunder cloud for a cap?
Perhaps it’s the Northern Cardinal
weaves the horizon with red
at dawn and dusk.
If so, it must be the Snowy Owl
carrying winter’s pale banner
across northern latitudes,
when I yearn for blue skies
dappled in downy clouds.
For now, I’ll sit in the rain,
under my umbrella,
occasionally lowering it and looking
to see which great black bird
is pulling night’s shade
across the heavens
as the sun sets in a swirl of orange
where an oriole is settling in the west.
***********************************
Ghosts and Where to Find Them
It takes a lifetime
for a house to give up its ghosts,
though the dead rarely stray from old haunts.
Decades sitting in the same chair,
the cushion wears the contours
of an invisible presence.
My mother still hears my father
wandering the hallway at night
trying to find his way back to her bedside.
Even in death, he is stricken with dementia,
her memories caught in the gears
of his perseverations.
Water dripping evokes his nightly voids;
the rocking chair sways to his absent rhythms;
the mind, too, warps time and place.
Alive, he thought her his long-dead sister,
his bridge to the present eroding
under collapsing infrastructure.
Will my mother visit me in my dreams
after her bed
swallows her in its wake?
Do the dead also yearn for their loved ones?
We too will fade to ghostly moons
phasing in and out of the memories of the living;
the only afterlife we know,
their memories breathing life
into the next generation of ghosts.
Long Before Us
birds saw the curvature of earth,
knew it was round, mapped the stars
and detected the planet’s magnetic field
to guide them on transcontinental migrations.
Long before us
birds had a map of the world,
adapted to its jungles, plains, swamps,
woodlands, deserts, oceans,
even ice-sculpted Arctic regions.
Long before us
birds had culture, sang
to greet the day, danced to entice mates,
built structures to house their chicks,
taught their young what they didn’t already know.
Long before us
birds lived in harmony with the seasons,
never taking more than they needed,
sowing the seeds of fruit-bearing trees
and pollinating its flowering plants.
Long before us
birds survived earth’s calamities,
its droughts, storms, fires and floods,
even the asteroid strike
that killed off most of life on earth.
Long before us …