Day 726, June 28, 2022

-

Bird Watching

I watched a blue heron circle high overhead. 
It seemed impossibly high 
for something so delicate and graceful. 
Its arc took magnificent breast strokes over where I stood 
and then I lost it behind some buildings, 
and then it reappeared 
like a flight from Heathrow coming in for an approach at Logan. 
Give me a piece of sky like this, 
it seemed to be saying, 
and I will give you your wildest dreams, 
if your wildest dreams are eternal peace. 
There were no clouds in the sky 
and looking up was like looking at a child’s bedroom ceiling, 
the surface of a glacial lake, 
the wall of a diorama at the Science Museum. 
Impoverished, 
the news said, 
dire consequences, 
women turned to drug dealers, 
twenty years, 
the witness, 
a lack of basic communication. 

Each wing beat a breath, 
like blowing a soft candle out.







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 1003, March 13, 2023

-
Image
A little more than a thousand days… I have been thinking about how memories do not become stories until you write them down, or perhaps recite them over dinner and a drink, or sing them in song. Until then, they are just temporal wisps of existence, like the day before yesterday, or the meal you shared ten years ago at the restaurant where you still always order the same thing.The peanut noodle salad sprinkled liberally with scallions and undercooked broccoli. It would be just a meal if not for the retelling and revisiting.  I missed the 1000th day, choosing instead to celebrate the birth of two of my children (twins), and then after over filling myself with bulgogi, pajun, and bibimbap, settled into dozing off in front of the television.  I remember becoming a father like those stories you read about where mothers pick up small cars to save children pinned underneath (there is nothing written about what kind of negligence caused a child to be pinned under a small automobile)....
Read more

Day Two: March 18, 2020

-
Image
Day Two, March 18, 2020 One of my rituals each morning is going out to feed the chickens. I saved the leavings from last night's stir-fry (carrot peels and ends, the bottoms of bok choy, leaves and stems of broccoli) in a yogurt container, and added to that some sliced up cabbage (something Laurie Parker shared with me as a chicken favorite), and then added a scoop of scratch (seeds). In another yogurt container I got a scoop of pellets, and headed outside. The wonderful thing about chickens is how they express sheer joy. They hear the door open and see me come around the corner and they get all excited and start hopping from one foot to the other, they run back and forth along the fencing, and if they were busy inside thinking about laying an egg, all that is history as they hop down from the coop to see what's for breakfast.  I talk to them a little bit. This morning I explained that so much is going on in the world, and that they were lucky to live in such blissfu...
Read more

Day 997, March 7, 2023

-
Image
Bands I’ve Known (Part I) Running Water (I think?) In high school, just after learning how to strum a few chords, we started a trio with Brig and Anne. Brig had an older brother who taught him how to play a few lead lines to songs like “Friend of the Devil” and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.” Anne could do some justice to Joni Mitchell and tried to get us to do some Jethro Tull. I followed Anne around like a puppy dog, but she wasn’t interested in anything like that from me. I thought Brig was a guitar genius. We taped together songs ten pages long and spread the sheet music across the stage when we played… our vision was that good.  I played my Uncle John’s old Yamaha guitar which I had slapped a Jerry Garcia sticker on. There was a little removable sound hole pickup that I used.  Electric Mayhem Began in a college dorm room where Claiborne, Skagg, and I played a 45 minute purple haze. I knew Skagg from the football team where he had rung my bell with some hard as stone hits. Cl...
Read more