Feeding Frenzy in the Seventeenth Year
June has come, but the birds have gone
missing around my feeder stations–
gorging instead on electric-caramel-eyed
treats, slow crawling, low flying meals. Al dente
delights like manna from earth for the finches.
A bird sits alone on the power line
Along San Ygnacio Road
Just beyond our dining room window,
Solitary.
A sentinel alert to predators?
Or lost,
Abandoned as the flock few south?
Perhaps it’s a dawdler
Like “Herbie the Dawdler,” described in The Child’s World: Mother’s Guide-Index,
Volume Six of my boyhood’s favorite books
Reserved just for grownups
(Though I paged through it
With secret guilt),
Mother’s Guide provided remedies
For tantrums,
Thumb-sucking,
Bullying,
Lying,
And yes—“dawdling.”
Herbie takes his time
Dressing,
Eating,
Walking to school.
Mother’s Guide
Explains how mother’s over-attention
Convinced Herbie he could never please her.
A trait I perhaps share
With this daily laggard whose take-off from the nest
Was never perfect.
Together we linger
On the wire,
Over a second cup of coffee,
Before taking flight.
The small field of my garden,
fallow for the winter
under a bed of straw,
turned twice by my spade,
winced and crumbled.
The horse manure part of the plan
for this season’s growth.
Summer smells like Kool-Aid packets
Inflatable pools
And water hoses being turned on for the first time
That smell when water hits the hard plastic walls for the first time
Is the best kind of musty mist
I’ve been having a hard time thawing out
My anxiety is high-functioning
It’s spewing out
Just like that hole in the hose
When the water gets turned on for the first time
You don’t remember where it is
Until you turn the water on and it hits you right in the face
Sometimes you just need to go buy a new hose
Too bad I can’t go buy a new brain
Checking out with a new brain would be rather embarrassing though
And I’m sure Lowe’s doesn’t carry my brand
I’ll probably just get the hose
It’s been a while
You would think I would have lost weight
But the drive-thrus saw to that
Maybe I would have
Saved money
But the internet saw to that
And now I break this threshold
To step back into the way things used to be
Before the dark times
Before the quiet times
Into the great vaccinated unknown
For here or to go?
For here, good sir.
For here.
Faithdrunk, with hands like a pop-up book of bones, tendons and viscera;
A boundless wave crawls out before me.
I wade into the water
just to feel my nipples pierce
through my cream undershirt.
I bath the long strands of my oily hair
skimming the edge of the oceans face,
I slap her
and then rest myself on top of her.
Turning over to see the opaque sky I dip my head below the surface. I see nothing but distorted figures of life. Back above the break of the tide, you’re there- almost lifeless near the foam of the sand.
We grown women now with memories
of hazy slat porches
culverts, purple martin haylofts,
rows of peonies, summer gliders
cigarettes shaky over coffee cups
utility lights on posts coming on
in the gloaming. There was no day
not given to wonder
cisterns scalded them soft baby legs
holding onto old horse manes
full of sweat and chiggers
blackberry scratches and low mud ponds
Tell me, when you remember
nights of slow moving air and
the laughter of adults winding out
under mimosa trees
do you say, I would give a dozen
tomorrows for one day of that spirea bush,
flagstones along a rural route
or do you say, give me wisdom to understand
the dark matter we all resign ourselves to?
A turkey buzzard pokes at the belly
of a dead box turtle on the asphalt,
then sails over Twin Creek,
singing as it wings:
This is you
This is it
This is now
