Swan Bones. Bethany Bowman
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Mountain, raptor conservation organization
At breakfast, a stentorian crack
against the picture window
and the kids and I are up:
jam-faced, suddenly caffeinated.
A Cooper’s hawk hunches over its prey—
probable relative of the starlings
we shared a house with last fall.
The small bird hangs limp as Jesus
in the accipiter’s mouth
as its breath is squeezed out
a few feet from my bell feeder.
This happened before.
When we first moved, at Payne’s,
British bistro in Gas City, Indiana:
Hawk drives small bird into French doors
as I savor grilled brie with bacon
try to forget, for a moment,
my life in Middle America.
Not that it’s so bad—
this life with starlings.
They find their way in
through four layers of roof,
foramen where filigree pulls away
from dormer, into the attic and down
through century-old pocket doors.
Despite my husband’s best efforts
with foam spray, we can’t seem to
keep nature from waking us up here,
getting into our personal space, dreams.
It stuns us, drives us into the looking glass.
Only then does it mount on wings,
like a flying cross, glide us to heavenly places.
Cardinal Moon
Why a blood moon? Our five-year-old son
as we unroll sleeping bags onto wet grass.
Is it time to talk about the book of Joel—
portents, prophesies, the book of Revelation?
What’s a tetrad? Our ten-year-old daughter
as I explain how Cassiopeia resembles a tornado,
what frightens us most in this Midwestern town.
Is it time to discuss numbers—consecutive
lunar eclipses, sixth seals and surreal dreams?
Why not a cardinal moon? A crabapple moon?
Firebush moon, ladybug moon, red wagon moon?
I relate the Rayleigh scattering of sunlight
through the atmosphere, how the moon
only appears to be red as Taylor Swift’s
“Blank Space” blares from the garage radio.
Where does God live if the cosmos goes on forever?
If the Great Bear is a dipper, Southern Cross an umbrella,
I will lift mine eyes. Chew the moon slowly.
Hear every crunch as I scatter it in fall,
that perfect pomme, as wind dissipates dew
like a doe and her fawns spreading star-like carpels
and seeds or a red-crested bird, flitting monthly
from crescent to beautiful predictable feminine full moon.
Chickens
For Jack and Amy
My friend’s husband is gentle.
He takes sugar ants outdoors in spring,
spends spare time learning chords
to pop songs big the year he was born.
But last summer when their pullets began
to disappear, his anger became fuel
for something else—a source: like uranium
for sun power or fission for energy.
He drowned the possum denning
under their porch; chucked its
bloated body in the back field
where they’d once tried to keep bees.
A few days later, the carcass was covered
in vultures. My friend hoped they’d pick it
to bones, didn’t want her kids to know
that like Cain, they’d taken an innocent life.
(The brood was gone without blood
or feathers. Only a hawk could have
accomplished such a thing.)
But the vultures left the dead alone;
apparently hog cholera’s easier to digest
than swollen possum. Husband away at school,
my friend mowed circles around it for weeks.
Maybe next year they’ll try an orchard, a garden.
Their apples won’t be scabby, get crown gall
or fire blight, and the cherry tomatoes—
God they’ll be small and red
and we’ll pop them into our mouths
like atomic fire balls, seeds and juice
exploding, mushroom clouds rising
as we watch the sun go down in the country.
Early Summer Prayer
The gray bobbed woman
calls common loons
with her hands at the bonfire,
lips pressed to thumbs.
Fingers open, close,
up and down like a kestrel’s tail
or blue fan in the relief
at the lower northern portico
of Hatshepsut’s temple.
In a boat the queen fishes,
fowls in kilt and crown
for as long as the colors
hold true or until the usurper
erases her inscriptions.
Like the first female pharaoh,
the gray woman would like
to remove the feminine “t”
from the end of her name
or float into some tundra pond,
evicting territorial owners.
Instead she’ll moan
as smoke and early summer
ascend like red granite obelisks,
each rich yodel a prayer
the pair will mate for life.
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