Gods Out of Their Element

Little King

I was up at the eaves on my ladder,slipping cedar shingles under the trimand trueing them to the chalkline,three blows to each nail as you sweptaround the apple trees and striped maplein your golden crown, the only royaltyI'll allow here. As though to assure methere's no hurry, you came out of leaden airto glean the branches while Icollapsed deck chairs and fitted themlike a line of Rockettes into the shed. Advent:things are drawing closer out of the leaves'dissolution—rooftops, whole housesreappearing across the marshwhose grasses mimic the color spectrumof wines. Last night a blondfield mouse fed at the suet whenI let the dog out, and today it's you,my guest in this season of small things.If I were a golden-crowned kingletI wouldn't have to search under pole beansthat resemble burnt wiring now,hunting the winter squashes hiding thereas though they had a sense of humor,piling the wheelbarrow full, so I thinkof cobblestones my grandfathersmoved in the same way. After the firstsnow there's a second snow, so I hopeyou'll take the rubythroat south with you.It keeps returning to the airits sugar feeder hung in, and should havecrossed weeks ago to Yucatán.

Superhero

At roadside this morning the discardedpaper latte cups outnumberedthe empty nips of Jim Beam. Summerwas well on its way, and shortlya whirring person, mantis-thin,appeared on a bicycle scrolled witha flow of vowels approximatingAeolia, a vehicle slim as a stringedinstrument designed and tuned bya maestro of silver microtools,its rider wrapped up tightas if in the flags of several principalities.Under the myrmidon helmethe took on a grim visage as he passedwithout a nod and disappearedup the road, no doubt to dismountand face off against a monstrous afflictionsomewhere, while I stood amongthe new yellowthroats and fiddleheads,hearing the first black-billedcuckoo of the year and wonderingwhether a walkis always only a walk.

A January Heron

If you were really Camerarius'semblem of the wise man who takes stepsagainst misfortune, you wouldn'tbe here today. You're notthe medieval stand-in forthe oversexed, either, unlessthis river, ice-colored like the sky,promotes abstinence.

Whisky weather, and you're groundedover there like the negativeof a marsh-side cedar, puffedfeathers maximizing insulation.Close enough, I think I might hearthis wind piping downyour hollow bones.

For your allegiance to this placewhere the osprey's only a rumor,in my Speculum Mundior Wild Guess at the World,you have the power of rememberingbeyond geese who splayfoot it downonly when the water's open,and the second sight to projectyourself, lifting sideways out ofthis marsh, displayinga Jurassic shape to summer.

An Intermission

After the last snows and the firstApril chive-bursts, two came inoff the flyway, not flyingbut coasting, humped to catch the air,their wings on the long glidewithout a single beat. White as ifa breeze were buffing fresh snowbanks,their wing-sound was like windover snow—two tundra swansby their black bills, not the decorativeimports children toss old bread aton public water, but long as a manand spanned wide as an eagle. It wasas though some epic I read forty years agohad drawn them out of my mind into the air. Cygnus columbianus,named for the river Lewis and Clarkfound them on, they had comeall the way from Currituck Soundor the Chesapeake, aimed forthe high Arctic nesting grounds. Like godsout of their element, they floated past meabove the pond and on downthe riverine marshes, pagan, twinned,impersonal in their cold sublimity,blind to my witness, their necksoutsnaking, intent on a brief restsomewhere on our little river. [End Page 541...