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
Autumn Door — An Image
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
Autumn Rain — An Image
Autumn rain —
a deep breath
after hectic Summer;
a vivid
and saturated
respite.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Winged Promise — A Poem
To rest
heart and head and bone
on pink-shouldered,
pink-hipped stone
laced gray with lichen,
and to see,
beyond the summit’s
curved, granite lip,
the peregrine arise —
winged wish
within the vast blue sky.
He dives,
snatches and tatters
the day’s cares –-
the week’s
the month’s
the year’s –-
in beak and talon.
A sun-soaked,
wind-tossed
promise.
— C.Birde, 9/16
Verticality — Images
Amongst the verticality of trees
— their communal and elemental truth —
there is solace.
— C.Birde, 9/16
Woodland Staircase — An Image
A quilt of worn bricks
remains
beneath moss and needle carpet.
Birch and pine and maple
glide skyward
through broken foundation,
through anamnesis.
And leaf-strewn steps
tumble
d
o
w
n
— like memory —
to the abiding
gray
sea.
— C.Birde, 9/16
Moss Wood — An Image
I heard the Wood call
in its moss-furred tongue.
I returned
in answer to that heart’s echo,
and was welcomed
as though time had not slipped
and shifted.
— C.Birde, 9/16
Reservoir of Night — An Image
Moon’s image
floats
within
a reservoir
of night.
— C.Birde, 9/16