Birds Punctuate the Days
-- Joyce Clement
apostrophe
the nuthatch inserts itself
between feeder and pole
semicolon
two mallards drifting
one dunks for a snail
ellipses
a mourning dove
lifts off
asterisk
a red-eyed vireo catches
the crane fly midair
comma
a down feather
bobs between waves
exclamation point
wren on the railing
takes notice
colon
mergansers paddle toward
morning trout swirl
em dash
at dusk a wild goose
heading east
question mark
the length of silence
after a loon’s call
period
one blue egg all summer long
now gone
https://poets.org/glossary/haiku
the new cat shares my despair the new black cat sits waiting in the window for the backyard to wake for a week he hid behind the furnace, afraid of our sure attack on the basement floor the cold rose in me. I cried flesh and bones melting in February's glacier. He will never love us, I said. But at last he crept out, lured by a dancing string, by our relentless use of his new name, our song of despair, and arched his back to my hand, answered me with small cries like thin bells, rough chirps, complete capitulation and now we are bound by a wild need for touch our darkest fears of being truly seen solitary confinement and abandonment together we watch an old world stream past the glass variations on a theme: winter's siege finally cracking, icy rain's indifference, how it falls and falls on a gray world, melting dirt down into wormy blood
Suggested soundtrack: Robins.
