Poem: A Single Thrush

 

A Single Thrush

 

i watched

the land watch back

from its jaded flax

and too-sensitive rose,

and i wondered at nothing

or was it some pretext,

while passels of leaves

flowed and tossed, hostage

to the arrhythmia of autumn;

and the moon was up to something,

sallow-chinned and cloud-ruffed.

its craters snickered, so it seemed,

so i thought, 

and sure enough the land 

soon bled dimmer, less color

than those grey uniforms of war

whose halberds and battle axes

could have been rifles

or silhouettes of spruce branches

stilled in a glade, home of a single thrush.  

i watched the emotion

of the rib-bare branches

and the stripped-down plants, 

the fey turn of the art,

as if to my skin itself:   

each shadow-stroke 

the gift of a patient artist

who forever howled.

 

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7/12/24 ... lots of changes, including the title