She is loveliest
the moment
before
she
fades.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Elder Maple — An Image
Lost in Thought — A Poem
Thoughts roost –
blackbirds
in leafless trees at
sunrise,
gloss-winged and
catching light,
throats lodged
tight with
songs unsung
that fall
unheard,
discarded
as dried leaves
rusting softly
back to
earth.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Autumn’s Kiss — An Image
Autumn’s scarlet kiss
rests lightly
on lichened
stone.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Moon Stroll — A Poem
The wide night’s
white eye
shines bright
and I
slip by
below
unnoticed
but
for minstrel
crickets
who cease,
midway,
their
spacious
Autumn
song
to retrieve
anew
once I
have moved
along.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Wild Ride — A Dream
Nimbly, eagerly, the little car leaps forward when I depress the accelerator. I had forgotten how well this car suits me, how comfortable I feel in it and how it seems to respond to my very thought. Exiting the business complex’s driveway, I dart onto the empty main road, zip through the red light, and perform a fleet and elaborate K-turn at the intersection’s far side. But my plan to save time, to take advantage of the ‘right turn on red’ rule, is for naught – the light has turned green by the time I have the car fully rotated. Gunning the engine, the car’s tires squeal, but stick to and grip the road, send me racing around the corner. From the corner of my eye, I glimpse a spectacularly enormous pine tree, its limbs themselves the size of tree trunks. Can’t stop, no time to spare…
Immediately, the road curves sharply right and disappears under a skin of water far deeper than I realize. The little car throws up liquid sheets as we plunge onward, but my fierce and exhilarating journey slows, halts. The car’s engine sputters, and the cabin begins rapidly to fill. Pushing against the external flood, I force the door open to exit and am instantly soaked to the hips. At this point, I realize I have a passenger. I instruct her to help me lift the car – spreading our arms and placing three fingers from each hand beneath the car’s jack points, we easily lift and glide it along the water’s frictionless surface.
Reaching the flood’s far side, we set the little car down by the curb. It gushes water – from cabin and trunk, engine and wheel wells, from all its seams and depressions. Its heads are wet, and there’s water in the fuel tank. Walking away, I leave it on the roadside in the sun to dry out. It will be some time before it runs again.
Autumn Door — An Image
Thresholds
and doorways spied
from the corner
of one’s eye —
step off the long-trod path
into the arms
of
Autumn.
— C.Birde, 10/16
be-SEA-ch — A Poem
Hold me.
Smooth the seams from
my brow
with a song,
your voice —
cool and blue and constant —
a frill
against my ear.
Take my grief,
the ballast trapped
within heart and head and
too-narrow frame.
Lift it.
Erode it,
with patient certainty,
as the shells and stones
that lace your shore.
Scour all to
glittering, gathering sand
that gives beneath each step,
then lifts and
blows and
scatters.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Wild Raspberry — An Image
Thorny wild raspberry,
whip limbs free of bright fruit,
stretches skyward
in recollection
of Summer.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Ghost of Hickory — A Poem
A lifetime ago,
crouched together
in the graveled drive,
swathed within
the hickory’s mutable shade,
we small creatures gathered
that straight-torsoed tree’s
green-hulled spheres.
Flesh rusted
beneath nails’ crescents,
we peeled and prized,
released the small,
smooth spheroids within.
With teeth,
with stones clutched
and knuckled,
we shattered
the inner carapaces,
picked
crenelated chambers
free of sweet nut meat
to eat
and left behind
haphazard patterns
of heaped
discarded shells.
The hickory was felled
half a lifetime later,
for raining nuts on
the car parked below.
And my small creature’s heart,
nested within the adult’s,
fissured,
broke.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Tentacles — A Dream
During the first incident, I had only to draw in a great breath and expel it in a strong, even shout. It had been effortless, like singing. The column of sound had hung on the air over the shocked monster until a red mist had formed and collected along its bulbous head and tentacles. It had vanished. Dead, banished, dismissed — I did not know; but it had gone.
Now, word of my feat has spread, and when another of the creatures begins eating employees in a nearby office building, a representative of the remaining staff seeks me out, begs me to dispatch it.
The building where the creature lurks is a featureless concrete complex spread in a long, single-story. I’m astonished to discover that, despite the very credible threat, business is being conducted as usual. Once inside, I direct everyone “OUT” in a voice of thunder. All scurry off in the direction of my command through a pair of glass doors. They spill outside to safety within a courtyard, and I begin my hunt.
I prowl long corridors, search utility closets, until at last, I locate the monster in a large corner office. A fleshy, orchid pile heaped upon itself, it crouches beneath a large desk in the room’s corner. Its tentacles quest, reach out and over and around the desk’s legs, the wastepaper basket. It gropes. It seeks. And it is enormous; far bigger then the one I had previously encountered.
Uncertainty creeps in as I take a great, deep lungful. Breath catches in my throat; ribs constrict. When I try to shout – no noise emanates, only silence. No ringing, exhaling column of sound. No banishing red mist.
The monster remains, a shifting, shivering heap of flesh and tentacles in the corner of the office. It fixes me with a yellow eye…
