Page 63 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. Iv #8

We go back to the doctor’s.
iv.
One on each shoulder, at dawn and dusk, my familiar shadows bring me tidings.
In the waiting room
she flicks through the women’s magazines and solves puzzles;
This week, a woman in a brown coat put a gull out of its misery,
When I collect my prescriptions I see
and walked home slowly. They watched her bury him.
Later, we hunker down at the base of my spine, brace for the blow.
brings up ground-held grubs, the magpies bob like barristers,
The numbness waits like a worm for rain-fall.
the excitable table-manners of starlings, the mating habits of ducks.
iii.
The crows are nesting. I worry about them, their fledgling young.
And a buzzard was sighted not far from here, circling.
like a trapeze artist. She gives her gifts by sleight of beak.
On the ground,
I am the colour of eggshells;
my hair sticks up like their chick’s.
I work and work to pierce the membrane.
you can tell she’s thinking
as she clacks her tongue against her beak.
gathered its broken umbrella body in her arms like a sleeping child
her: she blinks in and out of focus, haunts the edges, the tail of my eye.
They chatter of pigeons squabbling, how the seagull’s delicate rain-dance
Like all new parents, they wing it.
A raven was caged
until her feathers grew back.
He seems proud, has puffed out his chest; he scouts for worms,
loops circles through the trees
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They recognize my face, have learned to speak my name.