Even as I lift my Face to Rain

No matter how hard

I try to convince myself

that beyond that spot of water

is the Orient way west

past Hurricane Ridge

across the rolling Pacific.

That bit of water

I see down the gloomy street

under the gloomy sky

is the lake not the sound

teeming with salmon.

Will not Fly

All the talk about a shady picnic bench and a slight
breeze keeping gnats at bay, is it about birds
or my personal comfort? The sun’s been up for hours.
I sip coffee. I do not slosh around cold wetlands
before dawn cracks wide open, stalking noisy wrens
and blackbirds and waterfowl of various types,
nor am I stingy with butter. Just the other day I told Hilary
I wanted to spot baby crows. Baby crows must be big,
or we’d have noticed. The mob of crows on the front lawn,
the sidewalk, on the power lines running through red maples,
the fledglings must be right in front of us this time of year.
Is this poem a way of sharing the daily banalities
the way cliff swallows do, effecting a relationship?
Or that pair of crows, now, on a limb halfway up a cedar,
one is squawking so much the other goes flying. The one
left behind cawing, cawing. It does not leave its branch;
it will not fly. Is its beak a tad smaller? Smoother?
Caw! This loudmouth picks at lichen. Not finding
what it wants it inches forward, lifting a wing to find
its balance. It shouts Mother! She damn well better get back
with some choice bit of lunch and feed me! Father!
All that time right in front of me. If I were dressed in black
feathers and you could see light refracting sometimes brown,
sometimes violet blue; if my crow’s feet were obscured

by feathers, if you weren’t one of us could you tell us apart?

But What about the Honey?

-         - September, 2015

There was only one candidate, really, that had so many opposite pairs

of small rounded leaves.

We saw it first, if you ever see anything a first time,

waiting for the bus to Orient.

The field guide insisted on thorns. Long thorns, strong enough

to nail shingles to a roof.

And pods full of seeds swimming in pulp that tasted of honey?

It was a legume for god's sake.

Its roots probably bound nitrogen.

I trusted its identity when I found the female.

Her branches were sagging. She was overwhelmed
with pods--weeping like a willow.

What towns wanted were fruitless, thornless males.

Fewer seedlings to weed. Less bird shit

smeared across windshields. Can one female keep parked rows
of males healthy? Will they keep her

brimming with seeds each fall? Why do poems about stones,
tumbling in forever receding waters,

make me so fucking sad?

The Mournful Song of the Varied Thrush

In the early days before the internet,

before all these portable devices,
before location – you remember –

how did we know when the sun would rise?

How did we know those long clear notes

coming through the trees
are sung by a solitary thrush?

We don’t need to know to stop and listen,
but give his loss a name and others might hear.

When you are a crow and you are

forever looking down on people,
do you find you still think highly of them?