when sparrow faked eight to cover

There was an eyebrow of cirrus

stroked black above the sun,

black over white morning,

as I stared at garish clouds

and watched the soffets drift

under the steady clairvoyance

of two sage and observant crows.

I could smell the pitch to come,

a pitch that would hide the cones

under a white diguise of freedom:

if I had been halfway smart

instead of dumb all the way

then that downy woodpecker

would not have guessed right then

that I was smug and thus unguarded.

When I watched the flock

from the hemlock boughs

the traffic of wings

was appealing at first,

so ripe and bold and bracing

in late spring when wild beaks

peck fragrant nuts on bleak bark

and the mating flutter begins,

so behind the green facade

to mount eight pleasures

was almost numbing to do:

but in striped joy red ploys

were fadged in cackles

or plotted with a catlick

before the feathers bloomed.

A clam shell luna of night

illuminated her solstice of flutter

but a wet bird never truly flies:

when the new eggs hatched

they were tiger striped with lies

and I was not amused.

There will always be a bird

to fuck with a sparrow's head

if the blue jay is there

to bribe with timely trinkets.

There was only one truth she chirped

amid a burst of later trilling

a trilling never ending.

there was also water too

she handed me a card

but it was not as funny

as she had lead me to expect

I did not use an opener

but it may have been in a dream

where I was suddenly growing older

she wanted to be bedded

I was quite sure of that

for she told me so herself

collecting bling for the Ondines

I was also quite sure

that I was not intended

what the mocking bird said it's just a little

Some time after that season of keening rain

blanched the bleached slats of blue-gray siding,

the gutter's low scrub bloomed shortly once-

just before the blocked and frosted jalousies

shuttered the lime-streaked porch for life.

Inside the nod of flowers drifted away

drowning out pool filter chlorine whines

behind dapples on dry buttery siding

where once the rain had flowed in sheets

over a withering brown oak's low branches

and vibrant figs coaxed from depleted earth.

A table plated with unfinished eggs gives

a circus of coffee aged evidence of lift

in a place where nothing uplifting is left:

no mouth in the greasy skillet entices ears

with a low sizzle that has long since passed

into a torn curtain obscurring cloudy skies,

ripples form on the pocked aluminium shore

of lidless guardian service with steamy

gradients of starch under the striped rose

hanging a shadow over the newsprint news.

Puckered lilies would rather smooch the moon

than greet the apricot rise of morning stalled

long since a quartered acre of silence arose,

arose for a sun that only after stabs next door

and only after an early breeze shakes uneven rain

from other sun-drenched leaves of maple.

sang a ballad too

One item filling her arms

when he yawned the door

was the umbrella opened

when she left in afternoon,

an umbra begun in breath and blue

under a dome of breaking spines.

There was no salwar kameez or sari

even in aqua and ivory to meet

when she crossed the lintel,

her pale and ungainly jog

in the journey away from ash.

There was no magic in the candy wrapper

nor three-chord punk in sandstone places

nor copper rounds meant for flipping tails.

His mistake indeed.

The flat husk of a crushed toad

was sad baritone to his eyes:

the candor of found objects

easily embossed in giddy flock.

The pointing yellow markers

painted by an unknown hand

marked out a route in henna

that he already knew quite well,

for the want she imagined in him

was meet for her when peaking,

was only a blossom tip where

floating in a cloudy dome

the blood orange hollow rises.

a mondo of transcendent sorrow

Rounds of bubbled slag-iron

spread as ersatz cookies

under day's pale crescent

and nimbus frowns at play

to soothe the porcine boy

who only watched while

the moony boy became the moony man

standing on that sown strip of grass

between the same curb and sidewalk

observing the cars chrome blur

nonchalant with pot-bellied grin

year after passing year

the lawn sprinkler's syncopation

only worshiped by happy chance

with the rotation of each breath.

To polish in smile that door

with cut prism facets

and beveled oak galore

and prize a routine portal

into shallow self-reflection:

having been all things

being again one more

was barely a hair's ruffle

tickled by a light breeze

that hinted of rain

only later in the day.