Mob
and they were coming toward him in rough ranks.
In seas. In windsweep. They were black and loud.
Gwendolyn Brooks, "Riot"
All day was filled with the floating dead
of clouds. Children
throwing birds, guns for thumbs
and forefingers.
My heart is a mine shaft of canaries
and shells.
My smell is filled with flying
and what a sky this is.
The northern European still lifes
depicted so many flowers.
Lying on my side, looking. Where his eyes might be.
The dead teach us that kind of patience.
How different the drawings of a people must be
who have always had this kind of time.
***
A brief history of rope:
Some of us are brown
as starvation.
Happenstance is the color
of our eyes.
***
What happens when you stare into the sun?
A crow is born. From here, I think
about the image of God.
He set jagged stars
in the square holes of us.
***
And what are groups of us called?
It is an unkindness
of ravens, for instance. For instance,
a dole (an offering)
of doves. We've always been more glorious as a flock.
Groups of us are congregations.
What is more godlike than peace (other than insurgence),
than quiet, as of the breathing of evening
birds, the low warble of our people in the trees.
***
Sometimes a dream is a fist you grow into,
but more often, a routine, like watering a weed in your stomach.
***
We haven't been made afraid of trees. Nor the bottoms of cars.
Windows, the gavel, the sea.
***
A feather is caught in the rapture of a fence,
keeps struggling—can't come to terms—
cannot unthink that it's a bird.
***
What gives the ground the right
to gravity? No building.
I want to widen the eyes of God.
Every amendment has followed through
against our bodies.
Icarus leapt. We will fly,
be black together in the sun.
