Bird Talk

[theirishsea]

Too often my eyes are looking in.
True a lot of postcards there:
Heidelberg in the 60's,
Westport and Sligo Ireland in the 70's,
Concord and Lexington in the 80's,
Rome in the 90's,
Clonakilty, Ireland in the aughts,
New Orleans, Vegas, Salem in the 10's,
a veritable shopping list
of places to return to,
of memories to scoop from forgetfulness.
Though I don't use acrylics or watercolor
I paint idealized cafes, pubs, vistas.

Here as there is magnificence---
if I would just look, see the spectacular
of everyday, pre-autumn leaves making descent,
coreopsis in bloom,
the sky tinted with reflected sunlight,
a palette of colors dashed with inhuman precision
into and out of every pore in the world's skin,
hard and soft,
luxurious and pauper-like.
Don't just live in my head with all its fun finger-paints.
Outside, 7:09 in the morning,
East Coast, sunlight tapping on the door,
the swish of cars wiping my ears with sound,
with a call to be of this moment.
I'm so imprisoned at a desk,
a computer screen, words I'm calling forth
like turning a spigot,
images I'm sending to myself
as I say a name like "Heidelberg",
or 13 yr. old Maureen Krabbe
from 1958, St. Bernard's school,
a stone's throw from Baltimore's Memorial Stadium.
Maureen, one of the most attractive girls in 8th grade,
but the pickings were slim,
a homely group of girls
(like I was Fabian----I could only sing like him).
Maureen, a nymph's shape, the blossoming breasts,
the wonderful curves an adolescent mentally caresses,
the slight Mediterranean-like pigmentation of her skin,
the somewhat hooked nose,
the brown expressive eyes,
the soul of a little girl saint,
so Catholic when in Church,
the napkin pinned on her head
as female heads had to be covered
with respect for God
as God didn't like vainglorious human female hair,
and boys must not look at girl's ankles
as they knelt in pews,
in fact, the girls would be like a wagon train
heading west, "circle those wagons"
Sister Frigida would say,
don't let the arrows of boy's eyes
strike,
such lust before lunch!

Here I am inside a wayward poem.
Outside the sun is just below the lip of the horizon.
Birds and bugs are talking to it.
I'm talking to myself.
You, dear persevering reader,
overhear much of the nonsense
with which I preoccupy myself.
Just think of it as bird talk.

[saw]

a nice walk through mid-century Baltimore, the quirky awkwardness of adolescence, seen in the light of Sister Frigida's eyes....also seen through the eyes of how we come to memories in the course of normal day....

" a palette of colors dashed with inhuman precision
into and out of every pore in the world's skin ".......................bravo