Couple Blueberries Next Time

A magpie sat on the white horse without a saddle.
The horse ambled toward the gate.

My appearance at the muddy pasture
meant carrots in spring or apples in fall.

The horse arrived and accepted my gift
one hoof in snow, the others in puddled snow melt.

The magpie watched from the horse’s back.
Three carrots vanished in loud munching.

The magpie flew to a fence rail
approached my hand and vest pocket, head cocked.

My pocket was empty of beetles, flies
caterpillars, spiders, worms and leatherjackets.

Aspen Glow

Paul writes nature poems
on top of nature
in an act of literary graffiti.

The wind dismembers his poems quickly.
It mistakes the black ink
as industrial soot from all over the world.

Some days Paul writes city poems
on the natural landscape
to prepare it for urban sprawl.

The wind moves those poems around too
but more like paper litter
that flutters like dropped leaves.

He has lived in Taos New Mexico
for three years
and has no friends

from the Taos Pueblo
the Land Grant hispanic community
or the 60’s hippy generation.

He knows he moved to Taos
to stroke the mountain flanks
with his eyes.

To meet the ethereal beings
that live off of the hum
and draw rainbows down from the clouds.

A magpie lifts him out of this thinking
with a long sentence of magpie words.
He has not yet mastered magpie.

He begins writing a spirit poem
on the air in front of him
in a slanted sun script.

The magpie snatches the first line
flies with it up into an aspen
and drapes it on a branch like tinsel.

Paul records bird names in a little book.
He records Thrasher many times each day.

All of his thrashers are curved billed thrashers.
He is unaware there are any other types.

Paul thought about marrying once.
He wanted to be a stepfather.

The woman Paul was interested in
had no children of her own.

She collected strays from the neighborhood
which had a high abandonment rate.

Paul said thank you to her for the opportunity
but he was only in like with the woman.

He liked that she listened to his words
but came to understand

she only listened to every other word
unless the word started with a hard consonant.

Paul records Magpie in his little note book
for the first time while in Albuquerque.

After five days he crosses out Magpie
since no corroborating witnesses came forward.

Little did Paul know that there is a Magpie
and it records people sightings in a little note book

though no one has yet postulated
how the Magpie groups people.

God came for me.
This was her third try.
How charming.

No I am not a forest prince.
I am not a body broken
at the side of the road.

Let me heal you, she said.
A fire will reforge your spine
with hammer blows upon a turquoise anvil.

The apocalypse
is not the salting of Sodom and Gomorrah,
but a revealing.

And she kissed me.
With passion she drew into herself
all of my experiences.

You are a mass grave, she said.
You are a cocked-headed magpie mid-solution.
You are a son of the world tree.