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.
