My God Has the Head of a Vulture
Ornithology
After Theodore Roethke
To find the owl I must follow the crow who says my ears and eyes better behave; it’s hard for me to learn what the crow knows unable to refuse the blueish glow nor the shiny trinkets my wingtips save. To find an owl I must follow the crow who says, into an owl I cannot grow and takes me to the bend of my eye’s grave; it’s hard for me to learn what the crow knows. The voice of a crow isn’t caw but snow, an arc of ink across a feathered wave. To find an owl I must follow the crow pick of pine needles where I was below pinion of gloss and ash I glide engrave. It’s hard for me to learn what the crow knows. Lost call of the owl is clouded and slow wing of midnight and cold blessing me brave. I keep walk until sun wake and let go; it’s hard for me to learn what the crow knows.
Behind the Back of the Robin
Even in the city the cicadas are heavy with song and I am too young to call a bird anything but red. What do I name this, when the sun enters my head. I’m afraid the flowers are blooming again. When my grandmother feeds my father I know to sit still. A girl at my school eats ants. She snaps off their heads and says they taste like candy and it doesn’t scare me like my grandmother does. I can’t look at her or the doll she sewed me, without arms. When she leaves the kitchen my father lets me eat. The sting of menudo sharp, listening for the sound of her to return, like a curse.