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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
The rich little kids across the street twist their swings in knots. Near me, on the porch, wasps jazz old nesting tunes and don't get wild over human sweat. This is the first summer of my middle life. I ought to be content. The mindless harsh process of history; with its diverse murders and starvations, its whippings, humiliations, child-tyrants, and beasts, I don't care for or understand.