Ode To A Dead Starling

Did the birds tell you

In tremulous warning

We will build another sky in kinder hues 

The air as thin and bright as diagrams

Of escaping oscillations

Held against a winding sun

Bury my hand

Time’s mortared skin

In earth as warm as sleep

Whistling hymns to magpies in return 

A knife-hard split

At the corner of my mouth

Opens a sharp, metallic sting

Oxalis grows where you died

As if luck were grown a stranger shape

As if this voice of clay and air

Were another wanting prize

Waiting room

Everything is strange
Keep calm
This is just the end of things
Remember the smell of stale bread
Toasted until almost burnt
This is our body
An extemporary sacrament
Subluminary in substantiation
Transient, but satisfactory
As another sip of tea
Out the window
Above the swamp
There is a blue sky fat with buttered scones
Around your heels
Stagnant water
And the drone of dragonfly wings
Call life extinct
A breath, a residue
Your woodsmoke heart
Maybe earthquakes make alarms
The whistles of trains hauling rumbling cattle cars
Warn sharply of collision
Here the benches are hard
There is gentle laughter
As dogs sing
Have some jam and cream
Sweet, isn’t it?

Whale watching

Falling
I eat leaves
They have the gritted
Pungency of autumn
As if humus were the mired death of whales
Between the narrows, the soughing shore
Rain tastes like, an oscillating erosion
Breathe, breathe a breath
There is a leviathan
Waiting in your throat
To hail flukes
In a last flung shout
Of escape