Crane
Perched on a crooked limb
under secrecy of a mangrove's leaves,
a sandhill crane fans open then
shuts its wings,
the movement a slow,
startling vision
of sinew and length,
an empress gathering her
robes, purple-tinged feathers
suddenly, eternally still --
it sees us seeing back,
through the dark wet tunnel
of primordial foliage:
an elongated vowel within
the muscle of earth's mouth --
of waiting, of drawing towards,
a performance in limbo --
stick legs gripping this tear
in time, ready for dance
or flight, that familiar suspension
of our own artless bodies
in the brace of fear or love
January
Rounding the corner at Palmer Cemetery,
loveliest part of the three mile jog,
I glance past the black iron gate to see
a man in scrubbed beard, hat, and surgical mask
slowly, thoughtfully taking down
the Christmas ornaments
which have stayed past their welcome
on a small, bright fir tree --
it's a late January afternoon
when no onlooker stands to be cheered
by feathered and felt baubles, now signaling
the underside to anticipation and joy.
Obsolescence of better times.
Now here we are, days' darknesses
underfoot, and still going. I run past and
the man seems frozen in place,
as I sometimes wish for things
to be. The next hour to stretch
farther away. For sleep to trickle on.
The sun announces its brief solace
onto Fishtown sidewalks and sills
as my brain busies itself on its own
breathless tangents. Resistance to
being. Hounding conflicts into
concrete, entreating the enigma
of stillness with lungs' ebb and flow.
But it stays elusive, squirreled
away between the trees who
know best how to be trees.
And I, how only to heel-toe it,
with dogged, mired diligence,
where pavement never runs out.
Grace, where space is offered
beneath the heart's soft bruising.
Worth, where winter's end
remains to be seen.
The Ben Franklin
Like a sleepy mother, it bends
holding onto two sides of a river
rising and leaning its blue spine
of steel over water the color
of celestial mud, which bears
the berth of ships hauling
cargo containers and stacks
barely limboing their way underneath
the cross-marked underbelly
of the titaness.
The El train’s rolling clacks
proclaims that the city
is still living while its inhabitants
move towards the heart
of singular, pulsating destinations
Taut fingers of the cables
pull mightily with their dream of hoisting
up even the bed of the Delaware,
but they are spent.
Tiny boats light upon the slow
waves like pilgrims.