For Ron

No moon, just catch your breath

dark. What we wanted:

The light

of a billion stars.

This storm passes too slow

for the movement of us, caught

in the box-step, ready to rumba

and roar.

Killing your darlings means taking out what doesn't work from a story, even if you love it.

This one landed here for a final breath.

As the day's heat lessens, birds cry out calls of ownership, love and need, all mingling together into a clamor of I’m here!  Right here!  Stay away!  Hello!  Hello!  Find me.  Love me!  We’re starving!  Feed us!  Hurry!  Mom!  Mine!  Hello!  Stay away!  Hurry!  Hello!  Hello!”

Indigo Buntings scissor the air with high pitched song.  Blue Jays arrow from branch to branch, announcing their flight, more important than anyone else.  Crows gang up on bigger birds.  Want to fight?  Come on, come on, want to fight?  Sparrows, the white trash of the bird kingdom, serenade more sweetly than expected.  Mourning Doves pretend to be owls in the distance.  Chipmunks (not birds, but want to be their friends even though they are often ignored because they are like the boy who cried wolf) make an annoying sound like a nail being hammered into tin, over and over and over again.  Cardinals only speak to each, so much in-love that they must stay in constant contact.  Hawks, high above, whistle like a tea kettle in the heavens.  And robins sunbathe, waiting for a moment of silence before bursting into full fledged song, putting the rest to shame. 

Then by nine or so, they begin to quiet, and the world belongs to louder voices coming from inside houses built too near each other, the narrow alleys encasing the echoes, holding on to them until morning when they finally drift upwards with the fog, leaving pressure on eyes, aches in throats, and dreams in tender hearts of a sweeter song, somewhere, sometime, long ago.  

Another poem for poetry month

Sister

After deaths

shared, breaths

held, words

measured, false gods,

now we don’t speak.

Remember the tall hay,

gooseberries? I dared you

to climb that tree.

It’s time

to cobble us together again,

no one left but us

to die.

  

Any suggestions for a title?

Untitled

I pebble poems,

nuggets dense

as dry hearts.

Only I know

what shape

they braved

before I carved them

from the vein.