Dinosaur — A Dream

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“Dinosaur” –C.Birde, 10/18

 

Small dark apartment. Smaller cramped kitchen. So many stories up. The others mill about with mugs in hand, gather around the tubular-legged formica table. Dressed in pale, loose-fitting clothes, they shuffle like sleepwalkers.

The kitchen’s single window – large, wide, with neither curtains nor panes – stares unblinking, westward, out over a great ravine, toward a ragged bluff on the opposite side. A long, low structure defines the bluff’s subtle shifts in elevation. The structure’s white walls are incomplete in places; it lacks a roof. Slowly, the sun sets, illuminates walls and rooflines in relief. The underbellies of great, dark clouds strung overhead catch fire.

Beyond the building – there, in the fathomable distance – stomps a tyrannosaurus rex. Enormous in size and ferocity and appetite, it tears through the low, roofless building, pulls off great chunks of cinder block, plucks out terrified people…gnashes bodies with its foot-long serrated teeth.

Don’t look…don’t notice…don’t acknowledge the awful danger. Don’t allow the thoughts to twist and form and grow… Don’t look here…Don’t notice us…Don’t hurt us…

Too late.

The fear, like a siren song, trembles upon the still air. The creature turns, glares across the ravine’s expanse, leaps it in a single pump of its powerful hind legs. With a thunderous t h u m p, it lands atop the building several stories up.

Tearing teeth. Sundering  claws. The creature pulls apart the upper floors. The ceiling trembles, cracks, lets loose a drift of plaster dust. Formerly a drowsy environment, the kitchen erupts in frantic cries, dropped mugs, and calamity.

The monster digs its way down and down and inevitably down.

 

— C.Birde, 10/18

 

Toads — A Dream

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“Frog” — C.Birde, 10/18

 

Caught within the tangle of scratching, leafless forsythias at the road’s edge — that pale, packed strip of gravel, bending, bow-like and away left and right. Beyond the road’s farther edge, where the intrusion of gravel gives way to tumbled brown earth; beyond the earth’s gradual slope and the slim, young trees arranged haphazardly over that gentle declination — a ribbon of glittering blue, a deep lake of still water, its surface stirred by breeze. They have already crossed, slipped through the trees, their hands tracing those slender trunks as they passed, headed for the water, out of sight.

Watching, caught within the forsythias’ whip-wand embrace. Bending forward, doubled over at the waist. Shaking head and hair — gently. The toads tumble earthward, dozens of small dull brown toads shaken gratefully free of entangling hair. Watching them hop and scatter in all directions.

Laughing.

Laughing.

 

— C. Birde, 10/18

 

Moon Song — A Poem

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“Horsetail Bamboo” — C.Birde, 10/18

 

Sing —

singly,

in union;

Tooth-edged wings

scraping,

bending,

bowing

in praise —

each night —

of the moon’s

ever-

shifting

aspect.

 

— C.Birde, 10/18

 

Found, Never Lost — A Poem

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“Self Portrait, Shadow & Pink Granite” — C.Birde, 10/18

 

 

Dark uncoiling

of slim

ring-necked snake

Shadow

of peregrine cast

in a rush

over blushing

stone

Porcupine quills,

strewn

like toothpicks,

like pick-up sticks

Wild turkeys,

rusticating

Poised

in autumnal air,

a Kingfisher –

hovering,

hovering,

diving

into wind-ruffled

water

Yellow witch’s

butter

Bright scarlet curve

of salamander

tucked amidst

leaf-fall

The red squirrels’

constant scolding

Myself,

returned,

renewed,

restored.

 

— C.Birde, 10/18

 

 

Cats & Rabbits, Kittens & Kits — A Dream

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“”Kits & Kittens” — C.Birde, 7/18

 

 

As I descend the cellar steps

and pause but halfway down

to peek below…

a warm light flows

from windows

recessed high up

in smoothed cement walls

that peer out over

grass-green lawn.

This basement space –

large and open as it is,

its floor a level plane

of low-pile carpet –

lacks most namesake objects.

No furnace here,

nor workbench,

hot-water heater, or

storage shelves.

It is not, however,

empty.

A score of cardboard boxes

the area defines,

pushed against the walls,

and at its center cluster.

And each box —

by cat with kittens,

or a rabbit and her kits —

is occupied.

Each mother tends her litter –

grooming,

nursing,

nurturing –

in unworried fashion.

Paused upon the stairs,

I hear the unbroken,

contented

purr.

Back up those stairs

I creep so

I do not

disturb.

 

— C.Birde, 7/18

 

 

 

Burden — A Dream

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“Burden” — C.Birde, 7/18

 

The room is too small, the ceiling too low. A living room – beige walls, soil-brown carpet; cramped and crowded with worn, shabby brown plaid furniture. A room too small for comfort, too small for living. Yet, a young woman sits on the floor, pulling at the carpet’s fibers; and a large, elderly woman sits, at the room’s center, astride…

…a horse.

An enormous horse. Beyond Draft or Belgian or Clydesdale dimensions. Beyond the room’s capacity to contain it. A horse so large the arch of its bowed neck approaches the ceiling’s cracked plane; so large, the round, fleshy woman it bears must hunker forward over its withers or strike her head.

The horse paces a slow circle with heavy, dragging hooves, wears away the carpet, step by step, thread by thread.

The woman astride the horse dismounts, hands over the reins. Scale the great creature’s side…try to maintain a seat…slide, forward and down, along the horse’s bent neck. Catch knotted handfuls of mane; clamp  knees to prevent inexorable decent.

The horse flattens its ears against its skull, peels back its whiskered lips to reveal large, yellow teeth. It rolls great dark eyes backward to survey — unkindly, impatiently — its new and unwieldy burden.

 

— C.Birde, 7/18

 

Practice — A Poem

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“Eastern Chipmunk” — C.Birde, 6/18

 

 

Sitting

in restless light

I write — one, two, three lines…

Pause… and drop treats for the locals…

Repeat.

 

— C.Birde, 6/18