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The birds were louder this morning,
raucous, oblivious, tweeting their teensy bird-brains out.
It scared me, until I remembered it’s Spring.
How do they know it? A stupid question.
Thank you, birdies. I had forgotten how promise feels.
Copyright © 2015 by Michael Ryan. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 4, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
Who are you
long legged
woman in my dream
kissing me open mouthed
pressing me for ice
we fetch together naked
from the freezer
with bright aluminum tumblers
red deep blue purple
icy water
so cold it hurts
lips and teeth and membrane
lacy lattices of ice
shattering on our tongues
who are you
how could I have forgotten
my bright aluminum tumblers
I had to hold with both hands
they couldn’t be broken
even if I dropped them
that’s how little I was
My sick heart and my sick soul I'd gladly fasten in a bag and drop into an ocean-hole to float in darkness as a rag. Would it learn to make its light? Maybe in a million years. A million years of constant night in which it can't stop its fears flaring their nightmare tentacles and bioluminescent eyes as cold and sharp as icicles under moonless, starless skies: medusae, spookfish, cephalopods, jellies with no eyes or brains, lethal and beautiful as gods, locked in endless predation chains. How seamless then the world would seem, which life on earth never did, the living water like a
After the earth finally touches the sun, and the long explosion stops suddenly like a heart run down, the world might seem white and quiet to something that watches it in the sky at night, so something might feel small, and feel nearly human pain. But it won't happen again: the long nights wasted alone, what's done in doorways in the dark by the young, and what could have been for some. Think of all the lovers and the friends! Who does not gather his portion of them to himself.