Songs of the Puget Sound

2.

Yesterday
hens carried their round flouncy bodies
up into the coup,
chittering and cooing their sunshine happiness.

Something then moved out of the blackberries.
Little gift of wildness,
a cup of warmth
in a baby's coat

content,
and hardly afraid.

The hens in bed told stories
soft so soft
to each other and the hidden moon.

So I sat on the porch of the hen house
glad songs welcoming ears,
and the rabbit,
no more than a few weeks old,
nibbled the tender grass.

There is a time at the end of the most perfect day,
when the sun has been your companion,
when the air lingers full of the first few days of summer,

when there could be no more perfection
and then comes a movement,
the brown innocence,
quicker beat of heart
so far from your own.

To rise up on tiny bones and wonder,
to grasp a green stalk
taller than your head,

with no hands. Yes, no hands.
And I imagine how small its ivory
grinding as the grass and seeds slip
down into that bit of darkness.

Imagine what may come later in the long night
of larger hungers. And I wonder if it lives in fear.
And if not is this called innocence.

The ears turn to gather from this way and that
a warning, yet the air is warm and heavy. Old moon
hasn't yet climbed into its fields of stars.

And the hens, fall silent.
I leave the seed eater as we have
both reached our satisfaction.

A day like that
one hardly knows
how to write about.

~~~

Matilda the Hen

Within the pink stairs of brain's
abalone a new sun rises,

within cobbled membranes
lighting the electric boundary

and in this warm darkness,
the black sea flows.

I fear I am drowning.

I fear my heart's pain.

I fear that suddenly
the weight of life
may snap the last strong fiber.

Where will my spirit go
into that eagle's sky?

I pray for safety, I pray for a moment
of solid ground,
the earth's fragrant voice
in my ear, singing "Life! Life!"

Who will save me,
how will I save myself?
I am not the single heron
rowing through the marshes,

I am one plain swan in the field of many.

We turn the horizon snowy.

Or I am Matilda, the hen who circles
with her eye in the sky,

trying to stay up with the others.





....if one day is dark,  the next must be light.