notes for a bestiary

Spider
Your home-spun work won’t
go unnoticed much
longer. At least when
I’m away someone
takes care of the place.

Sparrow
Your reappearance
at my window proves
curiosity
is the sweet song that
animates us all.

Honeybee
“What business is
it of yours what we
get up to when not
pollinating your
weeds or making sweets?”

Buffalo
Heaven you hope will
be much like earth: a
grass plain to lie down
in and next to you
a pile of corn.

A rug would preserve
your tawny color
but not your mother’s
eye for danger or
your dread competence.

Today little one
your appearance on
the horizon looks
for all the world like
a second sunrise.

Mosquito
Why should I want to
sit unbothered in
my skin when to be
desired is such a
bloody compliment!

Squirrel
Your winter store of
cleverness, redoubt
of all small creatures
such as ourselves, has
never failed you yet.

nocturne

Like the moon itself opposed
To sudden motion you await
Some late bus or other
In perfect stillness and repose

Like the softly spoken word
Awaiting your return at home
Dutiful and sighing
A white and windblown curtain turns

the garden

The tulips are in
bloom the shorn
grasses grow

faster than they can
be shorn down
again the

fountain will flow soon
into a
new basin

Dr. Borlaug thanks
I guess for
giving us

more than we know what
to do with
. . .

fragments

from The Lion King

I.
Circles turn to an
African sunrise
antelope leopards
an elephant calf
grasps its mother’s tail

II.
I have my foibles
my share of petty
insecurities
but at least I’m not
unspeakably vain

III.
What better gift can
two friends give you than
a taste for grub and
no worries for your
adolescent days

IV.
A pride stands before
the high rock of their
hereditary
monarchy to see
how the king has grown

the wild rose

Before the flower comes the blooming white
and startling of dear intention that
the spring not get too far along before
its winter–educated bud can mask
the sun with its own kind of promised light

in situ

A misplaced step and I am face to face
again with Greece. The Areopagus,
the Byzantine mosaic floor that looked
for all the centuries like this one save
the dust, which hasn’t been swept up

in here for years. The same meticulous
thin lines of grout we found in situ there
set off the tiles in this stairwell where
I’ve fallen to the examination of
their small square–cut details. To us

the discovery was everything. Forget
how many just the same had been unearthed,
how unremarkable our find: we were
in Athens, walking ancient places, and
were tripping over wonders.