feather_father_

my first attempt at a video poem

mimicry

a habitat threshed with willows
where a hawk spooled slow
and the yellow disc hovered
as if almost a half-moon
eye over winter-water
switching to where bird-caged
your fingers and your red
hair and how I'd forgotten
until the white bars emerged
composed by marsh grass
and the light was as the light
you reined around you
in the bone-blue of summer
that blue scarf and how
I noticed the bird-call slipped
against the silver coins
as I realized how very long
your hair had grown
since we left

Flag

Will my bear paws
be enough to hold
the wire, the quiver
whip unlaced to make
an orb. See how it
twines where fabric
waists wither
into threadless
needles. Chiffon
sunset or caned
cords tethering
fur to feather.

O, my teeth--
I fear I will use them.

February

Where two girls make a seam
A yellow war unzips.
Or where two ducks on a brown
Pond become two dogs
Cast in bronze, galloping
Beneath the halo of a yellow lamp.

Where a hole in the wall
Revealed the doll house
Occupied by lost parents.
Where the feathered headdress
Is worn to hear the ash
Describe its former life.

There is no winter there, only
An unloaded shallow.
No glass barrel where
Scissors snipped and wooed
The barren into lumber—
A million knots and hollows
Opened up --

sugar

it was winter, or we
imagined it was. water
made of ice, lit leaves
and salt smell, dirt.
incisors shaped
slowly by frail
spines, commas
held and bowed
the way we bring
two bones together.
Vane and afterfeather
stroking gold, unwired
hutches -- a history
of emptied ribs, cotton
spun to white ecstasy.