Classic and Contemporary Poetry | ||||||||
It's a summertime night with hazel branches drunk with yellow. With the window open, he's in bed after washing his hands to hold the precious book. He closes his eyes dreaming of migrating birds, specks on the sky. The room is charcoal gray. Nice background for his copper hands. On the page the bird lands on a fragile branch, wings vibrate. She's in bed too watching him turning pages. She shivers like a bird. They're in their larval states, suspended in animation. After all they are just-married. Still mysterious to each other. Now she throws the blue quilt back exposing his bright red underwings, his nature. She too flashes bright red under her wings. The branch gives beneath the bird's weight as it touches down. They seem among late-blooming flowers. Both watch for bats, spats, flaws. This may be their life of embracing every other minute while nesting deep as in the crevice of a rock. They sleep where no moth will hibernate. Birds know which branches will hold their weight. As she watches him read she's drawn toward her own wish, which is to rise up and fly out of bed, flapping her wings quietly, until she is far away, on her own, which is to say, beyond the mystery that surrounds the bedroom and the bed where they sit. As he turns the pages, she counts each bird that takes off from them, dripping ink, as they go out the window into the summer night. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE SYNCOPATED CAKEWALK by CLARENCE MAJOR REVELATION AT CAP FERRAT by CLARENCE MAJOR SAND FLESH AND SKY by CLARENCE MAJOR A GUY I KNOW ON 47TH AND COTTAGE by CLARENCE MAJOR AGING TOGETHER by CLARENCE MAJOR AT THE ZOO IN SPAIN by CLARENCE MAJOR ATELIER CEZANNE by CLARENCE MAJOR BALLROOM DARK by CLARENCE MAJOR |
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