The Crows that Came to Roost

The crows come to smoke at dawn,
not like any swan but like the swan
by the pond whose wings unfold as to flap

away from the burial of heaps where
the timbers are stained, burried
beneath ashes. The ashes are not really black:

they are blackened like the crows
I imagine at the creation of time were made
soothed by the Greek Gods who also

cupped their liquid to the earth
(as we know as rivers now, as seas)
and moulded the earth to trees /

to mountains as they do with sand
by the beach, the small children.
Was this ever a town to which

the ploughers plowed the fields,
raked the rows by tomato
shrubs, and the woman did their

daily bidding, they who were the
cookers, the spinners of garn
(of wool) for cloths, and the men

the blacksmiths that hammered
to strength the weapons (as in
the stories we know all too well:

swords, shields, a few men, a battle),
the children like tended lambs . . .
Today, in flocks, herons pass as they

would over anything. The village
is ash and smoke, a beaten warrior in a war
that does not end, does not seem to.

Recall, the boars must have left
this place a long time ago; the ravens,
the crows, as to any dying place,

have come to roost. Here is the
abandoned fiddle, here the spinner
from once the women spun wool,

here is the silence of the rooster without voice:

Growing up: Less Imagination, More

Like a bird, any bird: a pigeon maybe.
Or like a volcano, as cold as coins; as
warm as lava. Yes, that is my heart.
It changes, changes the way a swan
does, at first--a swan, then a girl. It's
fairytale, but who said my heart
isn't? Who, aegis-like, as if a cargo
around their mind, think of the heart as
else? A steadiness, a throbbing
(Here, feel it)?
There's only this much truth,
this much imagination. Take what's left
of the latter, given chance, when chance
give it, gave: with hands in air as though
saying, Here, take some.

This is How You Paint a Mockingbird

I bought a harness, I bought a bridle.
A canvas, and a brush. Today I'll be
a painter, tomorrow a horseman.
How my left hand give colour give shape,
how each line, each stroke, fills
the canvas. This is how I paint
a mockingbird. This is how
you shoot it.


(Note: L. 1 from Carl Phillips)