Some new poems: Urban Pastorals

Pastoral 2


Not the lightning strike, nor the grackle
who fell from the tree, nor me, watching from the porch—
It’s the other me being acted on: the way ice
converts to gas because of heat.
And I’m thinking,
too, of resolution: that the stones in my hand —
their moss and grime — are more
than quartz, feldspar: their knownness
unsatisfying, and then
tossing them behind me on the path.

+++++++++++

Pastoral 4: an ecology


At a corner snack bar, the girls
serve salesmen who juggle their gadgets.
Outside, workers sneak their smokes, touch up their lips;
the tourists leave without a bite ($4.50 for tea).
Winter’s sunshine skims the building’s edge.
A pigeon digs for crumbs. The streets
are peopled with silk and feathers,
and the reoccurring impetus of gain.

+++++++

Daybreak: August


A train, distant, with a mournful horn
opening the day: overcast but full of birds.
Their industry, and the crickets
and cars whizzing the avenues.

A chair, rooted in grass blades,
my place to depart from dreams. I am
that sparrow on the alley wire. And the sirens —
even at this hour. Even in this calm.

++++++++

Like It or Not


Sirens gust beyond the rooftops.
The activity of vacancy beyond those rooftops,
the murderous sidewalks not far from home.

Deshawn (in the news) said:
“I would change the story …a quiet part of town
where knives and guns fall asleep while we play.”

Baltimore’s poverty weaves itself across the avenues.
Its achievements cross-stitched, plot line
punctuated by small trees
in small sockets. An ecology.

Whether we like it or not, humans
have become the meaning of the earth.

+++++++++++

Pastoral 6


The concrete actual

The actual gunshot

The fashionable restaurant

The operatic unemployment line

The rat and starling : run free.

Look for the original river
Underground. Still. In its culvert

Pooling the harbor, the reservoir. The pipes
animated and quenching.



A faint and cacophonous entanglement.

+++++++
Cornice Roofline

where pigeons study the intersection
of Aisquith and North.

The particular building,
the particular intersection:
bus stop, gasoline,
burgers and ribs : evidence :

two species
at rest, a red light
20 drivers : 20 birds

incomplete in our differences, our likenesses

The tarpaper sun-trap
The asphalt sun trap

A need for,
A terrible need, commonplace

The small minds: pigeon-sized
Oily feathers, opalescent in the January sun

+++++++++
Propped by fat pillows,
the mind’s blue eyes survey the rooftops.
Wires crisscross the alleyway.

A squirrel on the wire running,
Furred claws curled around electric weavings.
It moves between shingles and the trees.

Is it running? Or something more squirrel-like—
Not: “I want that walnut,” but something
squirrel-voiced or voiceless.

A mind can’t know what it is.