Come out, come out wherever!
You are the bird who bore me swaddled
Down the chimney. All I’m after
Is a feather. I promise
My eyes are still soot-covered:
One-Mississippi…
As I search field-guide depictions
For your plumage, you may perch
Comically atop my head,
Vulture-like, until your turn
To be It. Yes, you are mute,
But is your swoop soundless, too?
See these wax parodies of wings?
Just one quill would be enough
To direct them to the nest
Where your eggs rest, ostensibly.
If you’re south for the winter,
There wouldn’t be these tracks—
Would there?
Earlier today I caught the dog-headed god
Chasing old cars on the freeway.
In former times, the patron of lost souls
Would weigh our hearts against your feather.
He is now content to fetch the stick
Again and again, as if that were the needle
In the celestial haystack, the favor
Of a lifetime.
Domesticated,
Panting just like the others,
He is reduced to pursuing his tail,
The thing he truly has.
Too often to bear, he barks
After nothing in particular,
At everything at once.
3 comments:
i love this one! the playfulness is so good. it makes the poem so accessible and inviting. the last stanza reminds me of your skylark haiku. did you mean for it to convey the same idea, or are you getting at something different?
thanks! i might not be done with this yet, but i was itching to put it up and see how it comes off. i think there is some kinship with the skylark...the tail of Anubis (the dog god) is kind of like God or truth in that you needn't find it or know it to "have" it, for it to be there--it's always there, whatever it is. reality is all we have, the backdrop that always prefaces our searching and finding, yet people die lonely and sad trying to find it. it's weird. this poem is the wax set of wings, a self-conscious dialogue with its own subject and origin, or something like that.
i had just finished reading a 30-page dissection of Charles Simic's "White" as an ur-poem, one which aims not just to perform an act of naming a thing, but to cast a different light on things in general. i see these a bit like assuming the creative role of Adam (naming) versus that of God (lighting). the book is more eloquent and hifalutin in explaining this (in Heidegger's terms)--it's called You Must Change Your Life, which is the directive it would ascribe to such a poem.
also, i resisted using the phrase "Olly Olly Oxen Free", possibly as a title. what a great phrase.
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