Birds

I. The Blackbird
The young blackbird follows an arbitrary flight path
Her wings clip the air as she swerves,
The wind gallops past
She is saluted against the night sky
A dove
But charred, with ember violet eyes
Thunder crumbles beneath her
Clouds rise to meet her
gray wool, scarred by
shadow

she rests on a gnarled branch by day,
Grape eyes shuttered.
As the sun sinks into blue,
The blackbird awakens
she opens her scrawny beak to yawn
and then cuts the silent dusk with wings
Weaving and soaring
Like a jagged cliff.
She has
No Direction,
Or mama bird.
No warm, familiar nest.

II. The Peacock
Pin legged, scrawny
And bent over, as if in prayer
The grandmother peacock fattens on birdseed
She squats, Buddha like in an elaborate pen.
Her feathers, an unwashed garment, are tinged with dirt

she squawks with smug laughter
schemes and meditates on her desires
like a lady Macbeth
Crone’s sallow eyes have sunk into her skull.
as she dreams,
her eyelashes droop like cat whiskers
Willow branches shading rheumy eyes

but her talons are sharp, and smooth as pearl
Her belly, plump
Mind, cut with dumb wit

Tourist boys and girls toss
popcorn and sweets into her cage

greedily, she swallows
without repose;
the peacock chokes on a wrapper
and topples clumsily to the ground

neck twisted, head a shadow of macabre
her great belly jiggles
like black marmalade in a porcelain dish

it takes two days for her keepers
to become
unsettled by the quiet

they dig her rigid body from
a pile of seeds
and swipe dirty fingers across her face
to close milky unseeing eyes