I've been on "list silence" for a good while now, and what better way to break it with a snapshot? A little late, but written on time, for what it's worth. This one comes, for a change, from Boulder, CO, where I'm subjecting myself to the vagaries of the Naropa Summer Writing Program (not to mention subjecting my unsuspecting Norwegian family to jet lag and 90-degree highs).
State Birds
#23 (of an imagined sequence)
tennessee in eighty-six and dark crick, twitch
tree-bound heartbeat through the
invisible brown of the run-off ditch
a cicadian cloud of song humming hugely
like a power station
beat by kilowatt beat harmonious dark
and holy
but oh! afternoons
the deciduous blaze leaf wind thrill
lapping of the lake
a hundred pens
inscribing turtles on the shore
mocking
birds
in Boulder
no mockingbird's but
its song is in everysong
the
flap
of its broad
grey
wings
thunderclaps over the Rockies
--Boulder, June 21, 2006
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