Sherry Chandler
Common GracklesSpying a black feather
beside the back step, I speculate whether one of the wandering cats had feasted on grackle. A wren nests in a weathered condensed soup can in the shop. She’s small and solitary. Until the nestlings flit we’ll prop the door a crack. Grackles flock in plagues or cackles. Kibble gobblers, bird seed sackers, they splatter the deck. A mockingbird ad libs in the oak a choir of warblers. Grackles can mock but mostly they squawk. Their feathers refract the sun blue-black, an oil slick rainbow. Bird-brainy, bully brash they swagger and snatch a worm from a robin’s beak, nosh its eggs for a snack. They see all with those yellow eyes, you won’t keep a cache of birdseed with a simple latch. Raucous rapscallions, egghead scallywags, amaze as they rankle. They bring it on up to the brag. Is my opinion ungrounded? Folks make heroes of hellions, kids, killers, wild bunch gangs. Grackles raise my hackles but I won’t be too chagrinned if the pinion’s merely shed. Storm FrontThe wind
tears at the mind like a beagle that’s found the winded rabbit gone to ground in a rock pile. The killer, determined the chase shall have its proper end and rocks shall not withstand bays lust to find and rend. Out the North WindowA downy woodpecker spirals up the dogwood
like stripes spiraling up a barber pole. A walnut, fallen into the hollow where the trunk splits, has turned from green to black. The bird taps here, taps there, exploring. This is not the jackhammer of serious purpose. The bird is looking but he has not found. A sprout arches into the buttress of a branch, the feral cat’s viaduct to the roof. The woodpecker pays her no mind. A catbird clings to the window frame, wing-beating its reflection. Unable to hold onto the tenuous perch, it retreats to a nearby twig. Cat, catbird, and the day are gray. The tree sports a few red berries, and the woodpecker is Harlequin with red cockade. He flits away to the ash in pattering rain. Feeding the BirdsI watch you fill the feeders — raveled threads
hanging from your out-at-elbows coat -- birds, squirrels, raccoons, the lame stray cat, you brave the wind and rain to see them fed. Hands dripping suds, I watch you, head and nape swaddled in your shapeless black sock cap -- its weave a snarl of lathe shavings, chisel chips. Coat and cap, your wing bars, your crown stripes. When our wide-mawed nestlings squawked for nurture I fancied I was caged by need. I fought -- a swift come down the flue and caught -- flinging against this window toward free air. No cage, of course, but my own hungering to stay, though I starved in the staying. Homeplace with Birds and Trees ☊
The old black locusts that line the driveway drop
a few more limbs with every storm but honey the air with bloom each spring — a bloom that covers the yard like snow when the oriole’s an orange flicker between sycamore and oak. The mourning doves call out from the cedar every summer dusk and dawn. The moon rises behind the sugar maple, June’s sun sets behind the ash, December’s behind the sweet gum. These periods of home I know as my tongue knows the map of my teeth, but in the bite of winter’s wind, I‘ve been on speaking terms with the serpent, scorned songbirds, thought to try my wing beside the red-tailed hawk, to haunt the owl’s desaturated light. My hold is the catbird’s aria, the chickadee’s bobbing flight, the rhythm of your step when you come in from the shop. Stitches Out of Time
I feed the flimsy yarn through my fingers,
a thread soft as the infant who’ll wear this vest. It takes slow form, a single thread drawn loop through loop in a running knot. Newborn to creeper, the baby grows faster. More efficient, then, and certainly cheaper, to buy a cute, colorful, fire-retardant shirt from a big box store. And I will. But I want this meditative task, to linger over every row. The babe doesn’t care. She has vital work to do. A grandmother doesn’t count right now, except these stitches from an older time. ♢ |
An October FableThe Harvest Moon lights
the morning kitchen, silhouettes a spider building in the window like a cheap horror film. Though she’s indifferent to me, she makes me uneasy. In her proper place I count her an ally, but in my space, she’s alien, chilling as the growth in my friend’s lung. What point crying out life isn’t fair? Hummingbirds steal spiders' webs to bind their nests, a fact of life gossamer as once upon a time. Cochineal has charms, but where is the referee to rule evanescence can’t be caught? Out the South WindowAlthough the bicycle’s programed hills scroll past
with calculated speed, I see through mirrored knees a plane cleaved by the vertical thrust of two venerable black locusts, bark shaggy with Virginia creeper. Swags droop from limbs overarching the line of the driveway. All my domain is thus divided into parts. No branches sway, no bird flutters, nothing relieves this geometry, but the slow fall of a leaf. I crane my neck. The twilight at eye level is broken by glints of sun on the locust crowns. A zephyr catches a white pine needle caught by spider silk, swings it in a slow arc across the window, lets it go to float back out of sight. Saturday Morning Cartoons
In this snap I took
the boys look almost sad, snug as they are, though you show a hint of a grin. Three in a row on the old green couch -- you and the twins watched Bugs wreak his mayhem mesmerized, in solemn ritual. They lounge on you, you shelter them. Even at five they’d learned from you to discern not just the artist’s name but his style, knew a Tex Avery from a Chuck Jones, knew the movies from tv, a Looney Toons from a Merry Melody. I can’t put my finger on a calendar square when the ritual stopped. Boys grow up -- blankets are spurned, thumbs go dry -- they no longer linger in their Pop’s embrace. The rabbit hole, the wrong turn at Albuquerque, becomes a worm hole. Luke Sky- walker replaces the all-American hare. Amateur Photography
|