Drawn and Eastern Bluebird

Drawn

At dusk small brown batsfall from the eves of the porchhaving made a home for brownfur. A cloud of mosquitoesrises from the lake. With erraticwing strokes, bats sense their prey,I can only see or understandby what it is not, a small voice as guide.All these years I have resisteda home in the South. I don't know what sensecan be divined from the pinholesin black or if they drive meinto the night, darkly hungryfor a safety I can't see, but longingfor some warm thing to fill me:a perch for an evening, a cupof jasmine tea, the endof feeling as though this lifeis a mockery of a life. I've been afraid,I'm not ashamed to say,of the weight of a brownqueer body against a Confederate flag.I walk barefoot into a backdropof stars, something else I've fearedfor rattlers and coral snakes under leaves,a diabetic foot punctured by a branchor glass, but now I wantto feel the ground. I don't knowwhat draws me to wanderand I've come to these red clay hillswith an open chest so I can finallylay bare what of myselfI have forgotten I've hiddenliving in boxes for years, running,not allowing myself a shelf, even,to place a coaster, beforeall of my bats exodus at onceinto frenzy which is actuallyan orchestrated dancethat draws them to what they want,to what sustains them.

Eastern Bluebird

I, a yet unpeeled paradoxof prayer, mouth foaming

with psalms, pine trees backlit longon the earth, left the eye

of morning, the cauldronof the South, an arrow without flint,

until now ages away, one full generation gray,my toes burning with cold

then sun, I sift the clay's mouthfulsof dangers: a barbed tight wire, a rusting

deer blind, a Southern crossin blue strips, stars, and orange shroud,

in these death shadows,I call forth a new daylight

in a nest box of wood,beckon resurrection,

Lazarus. Come forth—

the depth of blue skymeeting rust—a sunset or sunrise

on a passerine body:blood and daylight on my chest,

until I peel off my clothes,perch in the bracken.

Selah,

Do you not believe the glory?