Littlefoot XXIX. The Little Birds Are Honing Their Beaks on the Chopping Block Stump
By CHARLES WRIGHT
The little birds are honing their beaks on the chopping block stump.
The clouds have gathered for their convention
from deep out in the dark Pacific.
They clear their throats and speak out.
Everything stills and listens,
even the little birds
With their sharp beaks and sharp claws,
clinging inside the tamaracks
Until the storm passes and the cloud bodies adjourn.
That’s when the big birds come,
with their sweeping wings and dangling legs.
Their eyes ajar, and the lightning sparks from their keening claws.
The poppies along the near hill glisten like small fires,
Pink and orange and damp red.
Behind the glass window, we hear the swoosh of the giant wings,
And listen hard for the next pass,
but they don’t come back.
It’s not such a poverty, we think,
to live in a metaphysical world.
Thus we become poor, and spurn the riches of the earth.
Such nonsense.
The crow flies with his beak open,
emitting a raucous cry.
The yearling horses stand in the field,
up to their knees in the new grass.
This is the first world we live in, there is no second.
* * *
The mind’s the affliction,
asleep for a hundred years,
Nothing to wake it but memory,
The deep blank of memory,
river and hills, the morning sun,
Simple things,
the body moving, not much, but moving.
* * *
Orpheus walked, the poets say, down to the black river.
Nobody recognized him,
Of course, and the boat came,
the gondola with its singular oarsman,
And the crowd got in, a thousand souls,
So light that the boat drew no water, not even a half-inch.
On the other side, the one paved road, and they took it.
Afterwards, echoes of the great song webbed their ears,
They took the same road back to the waiting gondola,
The two of them,
the first to have ever returned to the soot-free shore.
The oarsman’s stroke never faltered, and he hummed the song
He had caught the faint edges of
from the distant, marble halls.
It won’t work, he thought to himself, it won’t work. And it didn’t.
* * *
Clouds, like the hills of heaven,
Are nowhere in evidence tonight.
Sundown, an empty sky.
Except for the quarter moon, like a sail with no ship,
And no home port to come to.
Its world is without end.
* * *
The smallest cloud I’ve ever seen
floats like a white midge
Over the western ridge line,
Then vanishes in the wind and the dying sunlight.
How unremarkable,
though no moon comes to shine on its going out.
And nothing arrives to take its place.
Forlorn evening, that makes me want to sit here forever, and then some.
I’ll likely meet it again, a thousand years from now,
When it rises up through my bedroom,
buzzing against the windowpane.
* * *
We are the generations of the soil,
it is our cloak and put-on.
Somnambulists of sore intent,
Barefoot or full-shod, it is our destination.
Our Compostela.
We rub its rock for luck, and slip inside to get warm,
As though, like our grandfathers before us,
we lie down in our own hearts.
* * *
The dogs are barking under the newly planted trees.
When we’re transplanted, they’ll bark again,
but not for us.
By CHARLES WRIGHT
The little birds are honing their beaks on the chopping block stump.
The clouds have gathered for their convention
from deep out in the dark Pacific.
They clear their throats and speak out.
Everything stills and listens,
even the little birds
With their sharp beaks and sharp claws,
clinging inside the tamaracks
Until the storm passes and the cloud bodies adjourn.
That’s when the big birds come,
with their sweeping wings and dangling legs.
Their eyes ajar, and the lightning sparks from their keening claws.
The poppies along the near hill glisten like small fires,
Pink and orange and damp red.
Behind the glass window, we hear the swoosh of the giant wings,
And listen hard for the next pass,
but they don’t come back.
It’s not such a poverty, we think,
to live in a metaphysical world.
Thus we become poor, and spurn the riches of the earth.
Such nonsense.
The crow flies with his beak open,
emitting a raucous cry.
The yearling horses stand in the field,
up to their knees in the new grass.
This is the first world we live in, there is no second.
* * *
The mind’s the affliction,
asleep for a hundred years,
Nothing to wake it but memory,
The deep blank of memory,
river and hills, the morning sun,
Simple things,
the body moving, not much, but moving.
* * *
Orpheus walked, the poets say, down to the black river.
Nobody recognized him,
Of course, and the boat came,
the gondola with its singular oarsman,
And the crowd got in, a thousand souls,
So light that the boat drew no water, not even a half-inch.
On the other side, the one paved road, and they took it.
Afterwards, echoes of the great song webbed their ears,
They took the same road back to the waiting gondola,
The two of them,
the first to have ever returned to the soot-free shore.
The oarsman’s stroke never faltered, and he hummed the song
He had caught the faint edges of
from the distant, marble halls.
It won’t work, he thought to himself, it won’t work. And it didn’t.
* * *
Clouds, like the hills of heaven,
Are nowhere in evidence tonight.
Sundown, an empty sky.
Except for the quarter moon, like a sail with no ship,
And no home port to come to.
Its world is without end.
* * *
The smallest cloud I’ve ever seen
floats like a white midge
Over the western ridge line,
Then vanishes in the wind and the dying sunlight.
How unremarkable,
though no moon comes to shine on its going out.
And nothing arrives to take its place.
Forlorn evening, that makes me want to sit here forever, and then some.
I’ll likely meet it again, a thousand years from now,
When it rises up through my bedroom,
buzzing against the windowpane.
* * *
We are the generations of the soil,
it is our cloak and put-on.
Somnambulists of sore intent,
Barefoot or full-shod, it is our destination.
Our Compostela.
We rub its rock for luck, and slip inside to get warm,
As though, like our grandfathers before us,
we lie down in our own hearts.
* * *
The dogs are barking under the newly planted trees.
When we’re transplanted, they’ll bark again,
but not for us.
Alright then! I'm going to be out for the next couple of weeks backpacking, so I won't be posting for a while. See you in February!
Update: In the meantime, a friend of mine is going to be taking over the channel! He specializes in more classical stuff than what I usually post, but good stuff nonetheless!
Update: In the meantime, a friend of mine is going to be taking over the channel! He specializes in more classical stuff than what I usually post, but good stuff nonetheless!