Butcher Bird
Yer can tell if you've ever strolled into a Butcher bird's yard.
Grasshoppers and mice, and small birds'r crucified, headless, on hawthorn twigs… bushes and briars.
...
The Poetess of Blue Streak Grill
All salads here are served
...
Shadows fall into the eyes
Of animals: motile underbranches
Of night, having breath.
...
One grows to love the smell of horses
and urine-soaked hay
With the Chesapeake behind it…dung in the stables
...
Butcher Bird
Butcher Bird
Yer can tell if you've ever strolled into a Butcher bird's yard.
Grasshoppers and mice, and small birds'r crucified, headless, on hawthorn twigs… bushes and briars.
Butcher bird's got a robber's mask
stretched over its eyes, and a hawk's
beak
hooked like an awl for crackin' paper
skulls on mossy holler stones in wet river rock or
hangin' carcasses up.
Sometimes Butcher bird cries out like a cat with wings,
severs th' head and carries it up a cedar tree
to decorate its nest.
Butcher bird's life's built of loneliness, killin' and grief
in ignorance of what it does.
Butcher bird‘s life is like my own.
Wonderful poems. Transporting and full of vivid senses.