Our Winter

Mid-January and winter has arrived at last.

The branches droop beneath the snow of two

storms.  No bird has sung for us in weeks.

I have read of winters so cold, so long,

the birds fell like leaves from the trees;

always war is raging nearby or the smoke

of the crematorium has smeared the snow like

a gray, vague and indecipherable rubbing.

No bird in my backyard falls from a branch

that doesn’t catch the air beneath its wings

and swoop off into the wind with a kind of

triumph.  I have never been shot at either.

And yet, not forty miles from here a man

was dismembered and his body parts used

in a ritual with no better purpose than

the resurrection of some long dead devil.

In the next county, a girl of sixteen was

hog-tied and set on fire by two brothers

who confessed she had teased them with her

body.  One brother accused the other

of dancing to the rhythm of her screams.

And so, each day, I watch the birds.  This

morning, a cardinal sat hunched on a limb—

as if I’d mistake him for a bloody fist.

The Curvature: Speedboat

The river runs straight behind my home.

An iron factory spews coke down stream

And the ashes and willows were rippedw

Into the water by a derecho last summer.

I sit with my sister on a concrete pier.

Tomorrow is her wedding day — resignation

Is a philter poisoning her halting speech.

The speedboat comes like a swarm of bees,

Yellow with long stripes of scratched black.

A man waves as he passes and ignores

My gesture to move right to deeper water.

He passes under an iron trestle and turns about.

Now he’s much too close to his right shore,

Is soon airborne, a flightless bird in flight.

(He’s hit a partially submerged concrete pier.)

The boat, now vertical, drops him backwards

And hits him with its stern as it comes down.

We hear shrieks like seabirds, see flailing arms

Try to move him toward the opposite bank.

The boat is caught in a tight circle and strikes

The man twice more before moving downstream.

My sister and I push a canoe into the water 

And try to paddle toward the thrashing man,

But the churning, circling speedboat blocks us.

People on the other shore wade in and grab him.

He has no entrails and they watch him die.

The speedboat continues to circle — as my sister

And I return to dock — to circle and circle

Until it runs out of gas and courses straight,

As though the steering wheel has been unlocked

By the empty tank, unbending its curve,

So the boat can crash, vertical again, on land.