Birdwatching During the Playoffs

All mouth, the plaintive peeps of starlings
newly hatched under church eaves.
Soon bigger than most songbirds
they bully, they call wheezy for mom
and when she arrives bearing a worm,
a brawl ensues that can be heard over cheers
for the Canucks. There isn’t enough grub.
Mom soon learns to stockpile on the roof,
shoot three at once into the nest, a hat trick.
Quiet then, before the rhythm,
like the stomping of floorboards,
starts in again.

Conkers

Hang like horses balls, drop
one by one, clock cars and sidewalkers.
Upon impact, the heavy rind splits

to reveal brown flanks birthmarked
by an asymmetrical moon. Ambilical cap,
still musty with sex, we nose

before gathering in our pockets
to ward corners. Growth rings
store the season’s intervals:

from beach volleyball to Windsor knot.
Summer flown south on the back of a swallow;
the lakes we swam in are turning over,

heavy water sinking to the bottom.
So too our blood cycles, as we
armor ourself for the coming cold.

Flickers

Of that single bed we shared in Taos,
a miracle we didn’t fall out. Waking at dawn
to flickers drilling poles, announcing their intentions
to all. We left the blinds up at night
to watch dawn streak across the field. The scarlet-
mustachioed male jerking his tail and giving chase.
The first kisses and what else before breakfast,
before you’d head home to compose. The half-notes
the keys made as I two-finger typed, stared out
at the flicker’s rollercoaster flight—
all the early doubts forgotten now.
As I nestle into your arm’s crook each night,
it's those woodpeckers I hear
inside your chest, drumming.

Tracks

Reading the fresh stamps of pig tracks
in mud, the loops, diagonals, here
a mother and her calf, I wonder
can I trace my own path, straight
at times, then turning back, footfalls that led
to swamp, or suddenly stop
at the base of a tree trunk—
lifted by wings or jaws.

Can I spot the places I bedded down,
trees girdled in lean winter months
all the indigestibles: bones and fur coughed up,
tally the tactics of stealth, flight
that brought me safely here, heels
sinking their signatures into soft mud.

Hi everyone,

I'm delighted to be May Daying again. My goals are modest this year, as I'm working full-time and moving. I hope to post 4-6 poems. After almost a year of working on revisions for my first book, Night Gears, which is coming out this fall with Wolsak and Wynn, I'm looking forward to working on some new poems. And looking forward to reading yours as well.

Bren