Tumblers

Tumbler pigeons tumble head over heels

while flying, some adaptive advantage

gained by acrobatics, call it evasive

maneuvers, call it exuberance, or glee

or accidental freakishness multiplied

by breeders — no one can resist a freak

or a shooting, it does no good to be told

Look away! we need to see

how the world can be turned upside down

even if no one knows how

to make it right again, the tumbling bird

tumbling to ground, landing on its head.

Obscurity and the Amateur

by C. D. Wright

A glass is filled with white water from

the tap and carried to a shaky table under the pencil

tree where the glass gradually clears.

The rhododendron shouldn’t have been planted under

the canopy but showed blooms this year.

A few throwaway lines are put down and rubbed out.

The arborist doesn’t show up or call

to cancel. The chair sits low but the scrawl is adjusted

at the wrist. A book is being written

by an amateur for the lay. A legal pad held down

with a rock in the unlikely event

of a puff of air. Before long the mind sees a couple

making out against a stone wall;

the mind warns itself that love is not inborn so bends

toward the breaking point but love also

abhors a vacuum so gloms on to glimmers of not being

wholeheartedly blue. While maintaining

the profile of a raptor. It is a borderline experience.

Currents of doubt move around and

through. Behind the flawless motion of staggering

clouds, the sky. With great effort, an insect trails a leg

down the length of the table.

Sunrise

fat bluebirds, grackles line the wire

juvenile hawk, one foot outstretched

another hawk perched now flies

directly overhead a pod of egrets

I’m surprised to see them socialize

great blue heron hunched, vast

swivels its head to watch me pass

pink swizzles all across the sky

sun rises orange blinding my eyes

I turn away, want to look again

peek & look aside

                             one thin dove

rocks above my head, slips, or dives

Poem with Undergrowth and Two Figures

by C. D. Wright

If it rained today they would not go

to Wolf Spring. They would stay

inside the glass house on the lake.

Not see the black snake stretched

over the road. Not see the horse

and rider disappear into the drenched

tones of foliage. Not come upon

the clearing where the stench

of a dead animal quells the sound

or the smoke-streaked glimpse of her

boiling clothes in an iron pot.

Cataract

I lie flat on my back

on a stretcher in the OR

tape across my forehead

holds my head in place

soft cuffs bind my hands

I feel my eyelid blink

I ask if I blinked

I feel more blinks

no, the speculum

is holding my eyelids open

oxygen feeds my nostrils

Why, I ask

tubes along my cheeks

I can picture these things

though I can’t see them

a plastic sheet is drawn

across my face

That’s why!

fingers make an opening

above my eye

a microscope suspends

its two oculars

Look at the light

a very bright light

George’s fingers block it

he says it will dim

his fingers move away

still bright

liquid flushes my eye

billows of clear jelly

pile up from right to left

I breathe & meditate

How are you doing, Carol

they ask, I’m doing very well

thank you, I reply
followed by the name

of whoever's speaking

as instructed, I stare

at the light, three lights

brightest on the right

the pair on the left

each a bundle

of sheared-off rods

purest white

primary red swirls

between the lights

primary blue, yellow

the colors chase

& drain away

now back to white

now back to color

after a while

the lights dim

it’s dark, am I blind?

George asks for the IOL

Some pressure now, Carol

he says & presses

the acrylic lens

onto my eye

I feel it pushed

& positioned

at what point

was or wasn’t my eye

an eye?

once again

the lights are bright

That’s it, George says

Good job, I say

Perfect, he says

& a pause

Seven minutes

he says with satisfaction

it seemed like ten

for the first nights

a fringed halo circles

every outside light

I call it the lens’s

rim, rooting

What Abides

No doubt many a smiling valley with its stretching

cornfields occupies exactly such a “horrid chasm,”

from which the waters have receded — Thoreau

Shallow water out back, once

a finger of marsh — that’s what I thought —

twenty years ago dyked off

from open water to create this pond.

A culvert bears tidal flow & captures fish,

inside they’re safe to grow. A relative term,

safe — autumn brings cormorants flanked

by egrets dipping, herons stabbing, pelicans

that dive. Still, the water holds bass

grown monsters on fingerling fare,

mornings they rise up, crash down

like boulders hurled by gods. One day

a neighbor tells me a different tale, not

marsh but a field of tomatoes once grew

where water makes this pond & houses

surround it. A few staked tomatoes thrive

every hot summer. Post-Hugo,

citizens claiming to be wise (or town

planners) chose to gouge out the earth

to replenish Folly, the ravaged barrier island

a worthier, no, a more profitable setting

than farmed field, & so our land

is reconfigured time & again, not

for good by birds or fish or storm or tide.

Instead, for money & power these flaws abide.

Tomato Pond

Though night’s over, a yellow street light

shines through wax myrtle. Sky is gray cotton.

Six ibis fly over, pond water alive.

Rumble of a passing car, heater vents.

More ibis, dozens, one circles back

it must have forgotten something —

where it was going perhaps. The slack

of low tide, the lunar flow stills.

This pond grew tomatoes

before Hurricane Hugo —

the soil went to fill Folly Island’s

greater loss. A culvert pulls in fish

with every coming tide, harvest

for water birds instead of hired hands.

Walden [excerpt]

Henry David Thoreau:

For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman; tricks which they will have less need to practice in Louisiana bayous. When compelled to rise they would sometimes circle round and round and over the pond at a considerable height, from which they could easily see to other ponds and the river, like black motes in the sky; and, when I thought they had gone off thither long since, they would settle down by a slanting flight of a quarter of a mile on to a distant part which was left free; but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.

Thoreau's Neighbors

a moon’s mouth curves

to swallow a bright planet

a raptor’s (& an owl's) face curves

to capture sound

a locust chewing a leaf

this is the end

almost, of my 72nd year

what use this lingering?

beginning yet another garden

tearing out, snugging in

the cat’s ears swivel with listening

heron grates from its nest

ten days since solstice passed

days are eleven minutes longer

it would be dark

were human lights not blazing

back when dark was safe

Thoreau's neighbors

were not surprised to find him

out walking before the sun

& after midnight, all he owned

were his eyes, his ears, his nose

from the "Solitude" chapter of Walden
by Henry David Thoreau:

What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.