Each leaf,
a breath
captured,
collected,
Falling,
now fallen
in sweet
exhalation.
A volume of sighs —
oak & maple,
sassafras, linden,
& hickory —
strewn
at
our
feet.
— C.Birde, 11/18
Exhale — A Poem
Fixation — A Poem
The occlusion exists,
persists
resists clear sight.
We look, but do not see.
Focus trained myopically
on that bit,
that sliver,
that comfortable
shard of malleable truth.
Distortion…
Contortion…
Fleet glimpses of the whole
caught unexpectedly.
Insects trapped
in self-made amber —
dismissing whole forests
for the isolated
tree.
— C.Birde, 11/18
Feathers & Moonlight — A Dream
A cloak of feathers.
Tier upon tier – swan and goose and snowy owl.
It floats gently about the form;
delicately, restlessly skims shoulders, limbs, and torso.
White as the moonlight gathered
from that heavenly body adrift in the night sky.
Aglow, each feather gleams and shimmers in the otherwise darkened room.
A room of gray stone – heavy with antiquity – arranged to form a turret;
to form, on its exterior curve, a large bay of triptych windows.
Decorated with scrolling grillwork, each of that trio stretches upward
toward the ceiling’s inverted, conical peak.
Undressed, the windows beg the moonlight’s entry,
plead,
invite,
as if that tide of light could be denied.
Feathers — silver-limned, separate and together.
The satin-clad bed at the room’s center — softly aglow.
The seam of light that leaks past the bathroom door’s blunt rectangular face —
challenged.
Voices beyond that door…
No.
Ignore them.
Do not heed their whispering; their arguing, incessant hiss.
Do not listen or be distracted.
Return to the triptych window, to its stone seat and summons.
Rest upon its cushions – crushed velvet, indigo blue;
Sit, clad in feathers and moonlight,
beside the pair of over-sized and venerable gray rabbits.
Stroke the rabbits’ soft fur, until one hops down, away,
ducks to hide beneath the bed’s satin skirt.
Peer out the window, out into the darkling night
from within the turret’s giddy height.
Over silvered, grassy lawns so far below.
Past the castle’s humped and shadowed torso
to the turret opposite, twin to this.
See there?
Those triptych windows, lit to glowing beyond parted scarlet drapes?
Someone moves within that other room.
Bathed in brimming, golden light —
another soul.
— C.Birde, 11/18
Rest — An Image
Gently
— so gently —
the leaves drift
& fall.
Let them rest…
Let them share
— in rustling, rasping voice —
their tale
of fickle light
& forfeit height
with the
ever-patient
earth.
— C.Birde, 11/18
Halloween — A Poem
Halloween,
that narrow,
bone-thin,
spectral eve
when we neatly fold
and lay aside
our everyday disguises
and pretend to be —
’til midnight’s peak —
something other
than what
we otherwise pretend
each day
to be.
— C.Birde, 10/18
Little Green Snakes — A Dream
Stop.
Just stop.
Don’t hand her another.
She’s too young, does not understand the harm she inflicts.
Each one – gripped in her dimpled, pudgy hands – wriggles, thrashes, droops,
is reduced to a limp length of still-brilliant spring green.
Laughing, she tosses them aside – lifeless; they land
belly up, curled on the flags beneath her high chair –
the first, the second, and the third.
Please – don’t hand her another.
She doesn’t understand.
Just stop.
Stop.
— C.Birde, 10/18
Wands — An Image
These small, sweet wands —
liberally scattered
amongst leaf-fall and weeds;
at curbside and
humble margins —
are sufficient
for
magic.
— C.Birde, 10/18
Oracle — A Poem
All of Summer’s
light —
in diminished height —
angles in Autumn’s
outstretched
arms.
Oracle Autumn.
Astrologer.
Fortune Teller.
Caster of leaves and
stones and runes
beneath the Hunter’s
moon.
Elder twin to budding,
carefree Spring.
Wise,
with haunted eyes
of Winter,
and bruised with
impending memory.
Lovely,
breathless,
quick-silver
Autumn.
— C.Birde, 10/18
Dinosaur — A Dream
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
Sweetgum — An Image
Shining Sweetgum
sagely scatters
scores
of
seedpods,
spiked & spherical.
— C.Birde, 10/18