Silhouettes and shadows recall the fire of the night before
ashes merely cold in dewy morning
Dull monotonous cricket like
the starlings together fill the gray with noise
A blackbird
now another sounds the flooded landscape
Then without warning from
the east
a mourning dove steps up not quite in perfect thirds
Then west
another dove returns the call more perfectly
A blue jay hides in silence till grief
the prophecy is fulfilled and her heart now breaks so quickly
thrushes take up the triumphant praise of
the pink tincture now threatening to bleed the sky
More doves moving
northward
The robin cradled in the dogwood cocks his head while
another pulls at the earth
In the distance
a woodpecker hammers at bark and the sky changes
Doves disappear as
the lone cardinal vested in glorious red swoops
south and over the fence and down and out of sight
i really like the structure of this.. and how the different birds get their own colors of red and blue. should the blackbird be black then? i love the bird theme (of course)and the line "the pink tincture now threatening to bleed the sky". bleed is an interesting verb, i think it works well.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post. Good point about the typeface colors....that was an afterthought..i had tried to imply the colors in the poem itself...fire red to ashes & shadows (gray) blue hiding a pink heart to the red of the robin and the head of the woodpecker back to gray doves and then the bright red of the cardinal.
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