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There Is a Certain Long Armed Bird I See


by Darryl Price


from here with its brightly polished fingers spread easily amongst
the cresting winds off the choppy
sky, circling the sun and sea splattered
cliffs like a lone marble rolling down a  

smoothed out incline only to be turned invisibly

over again as if caught

swiveling inside a tedious glass

hour. It reaches bottom and it reaches

 

the top almost simultaneously

to my mind, living like a song on the

hairs of my neck, giving me this poem

to give to you. I only wanted to

 

breathe deeply my peace and quiet this morning

without having to pay one red cent

of tribute to Beauty's restless wandering

around. She's like a sad old starlet

 

looking for a lost shoe from a long ago

coming of age party. That shoe will

not bring back any innocence to her

wrecked feet. Yet I must admit every strand

 

of hair that loosely dangles close to her cheek

still invites comparison with a million

lights shooting into forever,

some crazy waterfalls dancing inside 

 

other even more wondrous waterfalls

ad infinitum. It's all a dumbfoundingly,

puzzling miracle's what it

is. Like looking into a wishing well's  

 

big moon soaked watery eyes and not being

able to blink away. And it's happening

to me right now. Would you believe that thing's

still going at it? The thrill is gone. She alone  

 

will always remain walking in and out

of the solid picture, a whirl behind the illusion

of our world at random, being

nothing more or less than always herself. I guess

 

that's what I'd like to tell you. That and the

fact I'm obviously getting older than the trees.

At least we're able to catch a little thought 
before the sun breaks down in blazing heaps.






Bonus poems:

  

 

 

Sea

 

To our credit we walked into the coral

caves with our ancestral humanity and

opened a doorway to the sky with an air of resolute courage.

To shore, of course, and then to the big messy

 

plants that have always been the islands. Stars like

lavender shoes command all the attention as always.

It follows from this that the slower-moving

molecules among us will have this same energy path

 

eventually in the grand scheme of things and turn

back into absolute mind, to being, rather

than to God, a good landscape for the sun to

affirm or deny again and again.



Sad To Say


my Euro pen-headed friend but you've just about 
forgotten to remember the Alamo, the one that's still asking you
to make your quick choices known or get lost out in the wilderness of another writer's 
story, in another time and place, the one floating on your mind like
a giant golden Buddha belly, perpetually laughing all the
way to heaven and hell, because you can't have both the mud god's good nature and

 

 

the sky's relentless pounding sorrows in your ears to hoist yourself up on and

cling to unless you are also willing to walk upright like a man in

a man's body. Bears only get to do it on all fours because they've made

a workable art of it for instance, and that painting is still drying

on the easel of life on earth as we know it. They might turn out to prefer

space walking. Or the put upon salmon might well invent a better

 

way to die trying and change the course of our histories. A pebble is as

capable as a bomb to destroy certain truths. Dying isn't all for

nothing you know. But is part of the actual abundance that blurts out

our way continuously. I don't have to tell you about the many

amazing fruits and different kinds of existences among vegetables, now do I? All things

talk as they grow until they're completely out of breath, and even then can

 

make you weep. They speak for no one but themselves I am told (more often than

not).  And I'm only here to speak on behalf of one of us too.  Oh anything

else would be disingenuous.  And yes my Dear lovers-of-the-  

world-at-large please do come together as always, once more, and welcome the

inevitable changes that bring us new bird's songs, wind, clouds, the grumpy

creaking behinds of the new trees gaining their ancient woody wisdom from

 

the sun and the rain while we flicker on and off their screening leaves with both

incredible violence and undying love bleeding through our lips and

from our overwrought hearts.  Or do you simply prefer your poets to shut up and behave

like civilized guests when at the dinner table? I'm afraid I'm neither.

And I don't belong to you.  I belong to me and I give myself over 

to you, but that's another dilemma altogether. Shall we dance then?

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