SLEEPING THE TIDES
You come up
from a sleep that leaves its changes
on your tongue, a high-water brine
of seashells, bone and driftwood, green-
glass floats and bottles, a sea-
stew for the tasting
and plunge back down
to images of home seen underwater,
a place you've always known.
Fishes serpentine in extravagant
colors. Even your hands are veined
with aqua.
Shapes waver by, unjointed as
if sieved by strainers, skeletons
of ships and whales' teeth, pieces
saved from deep remembrance
for a dream-sea
to make whole
again.
And then the dark's washed up
on daylight, a tidal mix. A taste
of salt on the tongue. Wash
yourself with morning.
CALLING THE BIRD
Morning comes in brilliant pines and shadowed
deck, the west window a deception
as one yellow bird strikes it, intending sky,
then stunned on redwood slats, bill and chin
upturned as if waiting rain, here in August
when it won’t.
I cupped it in my hand, it gripped
its life on my middle finger. It wouldn’t drink,
but flapped, awkward wing and leg askew,
to the branch that dangles windchimes.
You fetched it down, and cradled, stroked
the gray head, admired the bright chest
and chin. Already I’d gone to fetch the guide,
and we puzzled out the plumage. The bird
sat still on the railing as no bird should,
as if it wanted to be rightly named.
Why don’t we ever see warblers here?
you asked. Except when almost dead,
I knew you meant. And yet so hard to identify,
this bird in hand: almost museum-piece.
No wingbars. Eye-ring. Gray and olive-drab
and yellow bright as the sun on ponderosa.
Nashville warbler, you decide, in earliest fall
plumage. And finally we watch as she
stretches unbarred wings, lifts off, achieves
unwindowed sky.
PLANS
Thru the window screen the sun
has found a sliver between clouds
to splendor a nameless shade of crimson
mixed with variations on a theme
of blue. And then
it all goes black.
Between the TV noise
all week predicting to be
rainy, you turn out
the lights. All night you'll turn
in your dark around the sun.
You'll dream a sky come down
in rain like bad reception,
and wake to a faint
but pearling gray.