Murmuration

 

 

A voice between water and sky

is telling not so secret

secrets  –

 

I am a vapid thing.

I wish to say it.

The wind carves this timbered

 

crackling house

that’s never done complaining.

I wander through, talking back

 

with open hands, palms up, eyeless

eating time, begging for you

with a heart

 

beating water.

You brought sweet white lilies

at the cusp of spring

 

pushing aside the long snowless winter.

White soft lilies given to one who loves

falling snow.

 

This is where I stay, gilding the past.

I feel evening will bring

a dusting.

 

Portentous, starlings in the hundreds

reel thick, stippled silhouettes like dark art

inking a white movie screen sky. The sea gathers

 

their shadows along the merged line

of coved and open water.

What is it, life or death

 

in the space between? What does it matter.

The sea can be counted on

to gather what it can

of both.

 

 

 

 

 

The surprise on waking

snow hanging from the porch railing

wet drapes, pooling folds

and the great black oak standing foolish

with its green leaves

and green moss

splattered, an unwilling rack

for the white weight.

Such an impropriety

so early in the season

too early in the season;

but what can we expect

with all our indecent tinkering with the thermostat

but a summoning  of winter?

 

 

 

 

 

Bee elegance, easy drift

and hover, noon warmth replacing morning’s cold,

a sudden, thin curtain of hail, melted.

 

The lilacs have finally worked out the perspective –

a mauve ocean is now flowing

under the wide kitchen window

under all this shaken out sunlight.

 

How we starved in the darkest

corridors of winter

 

refusing to breathe

even the smallest desire,

all our weightlessness forgotten

 

and the damn fear, thinking it the last and the last

 

stored up ashes

the summation of our secrets.

 

We have suddenly become old

and foolish

whispering  hopelessness

to the grey ceiling

 

above our cold grey bed,

worry overflowing the cracks in the plaster.

Another winter spent lost in the same ritual—

watching snow drag colour away,

our eyes emptied purses

until the sweep of  sunlit lilacs

and thaw’s sweet perfume release

and the silvery strum of tiny wings.

 

I pretend not to hear the sad, cascading refrain

hidden beneath

that winds around and around

pulling tight at my throat.