National Poetry Month: birdBlack

     I. Black-capped Chickadee

i like to be 
a little round. like a question
or an oh!
to completion, 
black, 
like cotton burning 
in the field, but only just.
a pinky-promise with death
is one with living too:
hold me here
by the tiger-toe and let me 
haunt this place chickadee

     II. Common Grackle

i might go
to extremes. i am italicized
and a color that cannot be.
turquoise and purple and brown 
and all the coloreds in between, 
where light troubles itself 
trying to decide. when i open my mouth
what you hear is common
grackle sounds.

   III. Rose-breasted Grosbeak

i am an injury. i can 
love through anything. but will i?
i take the question side-ways. 
i move like the end of a rope swings
when the wind calls it.
when it says my birthname, i call back,
and together, we make it happen



     IV. Brown Thrasher

if you live in the wood long enough,
when you leave it, you take some
with you. what else? i laid
golden brown for a long time in the oven.
i forgot to turn over. i let the dust 
fall as it may (june, december) and collected only the most
beautiful. the melinated be,
that is who

     V. Red-bellied Woodpecker

when the sky rained blood
i stood at attention. 
i looked the horizon in its long
goat eye. i said 
there was a time before the air. 
just after there was ash. i know it
because i stood at attention. i hold it here,
in the narrow of my wing.

     VI. Yellow-rumped Warbler
 
i am accoutrement. i am a bracelet
and a brooch holding hands
that will not go back 
in the drawer. how did we begin
to fly? how does anything?
we moved not as fast as we had hoped
but faster than your hands

     VII. Mallard

i love a green-headed thing,
like a fly.
i love a beast 
that is also an action
i love when what is thrown
is missed.
i love to exist like a hush
upon the water