This noon I walked and startled off some crows.
They fell from a knoll—then flew.
I thought of you,
Weldon Kees, and how we haunt ourselves
through twilit furnished rooms, at open windows,
in walk-ups we walk up to spectral selves.
Funny:
the crows did not caw today
as ragged winged they leapt and flapped away
with expansive strokes into that taut wind.
It seems I’ve always heard their tattered song:
the imitable shouts, the gracelessness,
their throats rasping.
And lacking your finesse
they nonetheless will sing their big, crude truth—
though not today, as the day you didn’t sing,
but flew from the Golden Gate,
no word or wing.
Channing Street
What sameness on the street tonight.
The risen moon, like an ancient kite,
Tugs across the starless vault.
The lamps will light to find no fault
With Ebony and her somersault.
The boxcars humble-rumble on
Distantly, and then they’re gone
With rusty sides and faded letters.
Here neither side of the track is better.
What humdrum over the twilit street.
Our porches fill in the ebbing heat.
Some teenage boys in baggy pants,
Slow as turtles, quick as ants,
Make of their easy gait cool dance.
And down the block the arithmetic
Of Kara’s bike—its perfect click.
The deepening shadows hold no fright;
Oh same, oh same, oh joy tonight.
Winter Night
Gun shots: they wake the prudent city dweller,
whose eyelids snap, knocking the dream aside.
"Checking the piece," one thinks, "or did he kill her
for love, or pay a debt?" One cannot hide
from the uncontrollable, block upon block
stretching beyond one’s bricked and barred environs,
beyond the blankets, eyelids, and the dark
blood swishing through the brain.
One waits for sirens.
"Will they come?" Oh, yes, wailing official
compassion, blanking out the city’s low,
garrulous murmur. For each boy is special,
each dreamless one, each one bleeding on snow,
who won’t return to sing in church too soon.
This moment vacant eyes repel the moon.
The Work Life of Blondie and Dagwood
Round the clock the funny paper grind:
Blondie drawn for sex, and oh, so cute;
Dagwood made to land on his behind;
both of them stupid, one step up from brute.
In Sunday's strip Dagwood took a nap
atop the ladder of his discontent,
although this time he balanced without mishap,
and Blondie cried to Daisy, "What a talent!"
Sometimes I see them flesh: reading in bed,
Blondie searching Woolf's biography,
Dagwood pondering Nietzsche-So, God is dead?-
lost in literature, philosophy.
But twenty-four, seven, three sixty-five,
on they work in ink, not even alive.
Judas Tree
Judas took a scrap of leather
and made himself a handy noose.
Then in lovely April weather
he choked himself, with some excuse.
He bent the branch and idly turned.
A hungry sparrow viewed the deed.
Nothing to eat and nothing learned,
she foraged on for mustard seed.
After lunch we cut him down,
since he was seven days deceased.
We dumped him just beyond the town
and gave the feral dogs a feast.
They scattered Judas past the wall,
femurs, and dung, and flecks of leather.
That's mostly what we now recall,
that and perfect April weather,
and petals soft as Salome's cheek,
spatter of spring across the land-
redbud, the tree that for a week
held Judas in its bleeding hand.
