Ricardo Pau-Llosa |
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Oneiromancy
The dream of the hummingbird
insults tired sleep,
its clamp on flesh
like a wrench paying homage
to the crocodile. The flutter
in whose oyster of blurs
a double sphere
articulates fog.
Too geisha to elicit
the condemnation
of nightmare,
the hummingbird, alone,
succulent to the eye
and dripping in honeys
we could not suspect,
swings like the ax of horror
across expectation.
That is its crime:
only beauty rebels.
Feeder
The morning ritual, 7:30 sharp, seeds falling
black from my hands onto the concrete slab.
They will come almost immediately, hardly
have I turned my back on the oil-rich morsels
or the crackers I toss across the lawn,
for not all birds devour the seeds. The blackbirds
prefer the crackers, the cardinals the seeds,
the pigeons and bluejays eat anything.
I retire behind the sliding glass door
and watch them eat as I eat breakfast,
enjoying the parallels our natures breed
in us, acted out each morning.
They know me. By 8 they’ll be perched
on the patio chairs or hopping on the floor,
their form of prayer. “We are hungry
and you’re always on time. What gives?”
The squirrels come later, as if courteously
allowing those for whom the table was set
to have their fill. The crumbs, as it were,
for the little mammals, but there is abundance
for all, the intended and the opportune alike.
And bugs for protein, nectar for the hummers.
Plenty for those who believed there would be
and for those, just as hungry, who stumbled upon it.
CT Scan
You, the bent arrow
in the instrument that hums
the circle’s bow.
You it hears with light
singing deaf, a broken drum,
the siren you fight.