Now to finish, two poem which are completely
of another order.
The first I haven't really finished yet,
but I'd like to read it.
I worked this out as finished as it
is a couple of weeks ago in Baja, California at Conception
Bay.
It's called "The Hudsonian Curlew."
This is a several poems, five or six short pieces
in different styles.
The desert track turn around parked to the truck
and walk over dunes a pebbly point
hooks out to the shallow bay.
A mandala of birds.
Pelican, seagulls, and terns, one curlew far at the end.
They fly up as they see us stand settle back down.
Terns keep coming out of empty skies from over the oceans.
Frigate birds sail without stopping or greeting.
Pelicans sit nearest to the sea.
Tern are bathing and fluttering in the frothy wave lapping
between the small rocks.
We gather driftwood for firewood for camping,
get four shells to serve up a pail of steamed snails.
In the top of the cardon cactus at the edge of the camp
two vultures look, and yawn, and hunch, and preen.
Out on the point the sea birds flutter and settle,
come and leave, speak--
two sides of the border.
The margins, tidewater, zones.
Two worlds don't meet.
Three shot gun shots as it's getting dark, two birds.
How come three shots?
One went down on the water and started to swim.
I didn't want another thing like that duck.
The bill curved down and the long neck limp.
A grandmother plumage of cinnamon
and brown, the beak not so long bars on the head
and by the eye.
A Hudsonian curlew and the tern, most likely royal tern,
with forked tail and heavy orange beak