POETRY

POEMS excerpted from SLOW LIGHTNING — Impractical Poetry 

FLIGHT

When the plane went over the edge of the known world

we flew among things without names whose uses

I did not recognize

part harpsichord part bear

a giant door handle with wings

a choreographer with a bow and arrow

a row of tunics that went on forever

a sword fight with only swords

a dragon’s tongue floating

Where are we? I asked

Home said a man in a carnival suit

The plane had turned into a circus and they said the clown was God and we’d flown into his place where

everything floated upside down

like he’d forgotten to pay the bill on gravity

and we flew blind and wonky out

over the edge of the world in our dark flying circus

because God had also forgotten to pay the utility bill

trapezers stumbled from their ropes in the aisle and

the jugglers lost control of their ducks and kiwis

and the whole of us were heading down

through a black zodiac into what I knew

would not be good

So I kept my eye on the child of the conductor because everyone had forgotten

there were children still

and the babies were too light

they flew out the windows like doves

and because they had wings of their own

they made it out alive

HORSES

In my footprint there are horses,

hundreds of them, from little Bimbo all the way to Alice Springs,

hooves ingrained by generations,

dirt and sand and seedy toe.

My cannon bones ache like buggery.

My laminitis red and sore.

But I am still out in the field hunting truffles,

digging around with my cloven toes, foraging

Pegasus and Pegleg. I am pirate and king.

The underbelly of my sole reaches,

unshod into your dirt,

for a pocket to piss in,

for shoes of steel and clenches.

For my clenches have risen.

My pasterns are sloped and weakened.

Canyons in the wall of my feet and my future.

Jupiter in soil,

lifting from the bitumen, from the rough arenas.

The flooded fields of childhood.

I will fly out of this mud once I find my feet of wings.

My arms are wolves.

FINCH TREE

I thought the birds were gone. For good.

Then a swarm of finches descended on the cotoneaster,

spread themselves like ornaments

on the spindly branches.

Fresh cargo melding into the wood

as tawny knots

beyond reach of the cat perched on the roof

of the house next door

as mesmerized as I

by how the birds have merged into leaves.

In the patches of sunlight, one hops from one branch to another

reminding that the tree is alive.

me and the neighbor’s black cat

watching

longing to be among finches

as they burst up into the morning

in a tear-shaped cloud

free themselves from the prison of our need to watch

as we wait

me and the cat without collar or name

in case they might return and remind us again

there is beauty still

or teach us in the meantime

there is beauty in the tree where they have been

in the leaves and knots where we could barely see them

even when they visited there to surprise us

then whoosh on the way to their lives

DUST SETTLES

when the dust settles, I’ll watch the shadows of

the branches wander along the cream wall and

wait for the birds to come home,

even the crows as they balance in the wind on the tops

of the leafless elm, swaying up there like small black flags,

yellow beak emblems sharp

against the blue, blue sky the swallows that swoop

the calico cat in the grass around the base of the lemon

adorned with its own yellow emblems,

plump as breasts waiting to fall or be plucked

from their leaves by the soft-footed tenants

who creep around in the covid night,

in the shadows of the shed where the rakes and shovels

stand in the corner, readying their postures for work,

in case the landlord gets men

to make noise in the morning and cut the palms down,

as the cats hide under the belly of the building and birds

become nothing but a memory of wings