Our dog telegraphs her every emotion, announcing her moods with a range of vocal cues, facial expressions, and overly-dramatic body language. The cats are usually harder to read.
Usually, but not always. Here, for example, the message is clear: “Don’t bother me, I’m mad at you…”
Publication note: My poem “Waking” appears in the new issue of Willows Wept Review. The issue is available in print (by order) or as a free digital download.
Publication Note: My poem After the Birthday is posted on the poemblog at vox poetica, which is currently running Contributor Series 11: On Birthdays.
Two mated cardinals
Muted mother and masked father
Alarmed and flashed around the corner
Through crepe myrtle, plum, and iris
Their single nestling, un-nested
Precocious and half-fledged
Quavering in the awful sun
Exposed, expelled, exploring
The perilous yard
An infant still shaped to shell
Convex and vexed
Voraciously alive
Irresistibly ugly kernel
Of what might be lovely
Clad in summer plume
Though now all hungry gape
Begging nourishment
Little family of fear on the lawn
Watched by the brooding housewife
Who sits her own reluctant nest
Of amniotic memory
Hatching into phrase
And eager to mature
Like the cardinal chick
Which disappeared next morning
Gone from the woodpile and irises
From the bright wing of father
From the red-headed husband
Whose pajama-clad wife
Frets barefoot in the dew
Under attack, trees share their secrets
Spread rumors of invasion
Or infestation, a whiff of stress perfume
Winding through the damaged grove
Whispering the key to survival
Simple and complex molecules seep
From root to root, fungal lines
Of communication ringing
The soil switchboard with toxic
News, rousing a gene, waking
A cascade of defense in pristine leaves
That become jaded, learn the noxious
Knack of bitterness, turn tasteless
In time to repel the siege
A moth, a dragonfly, and a new publication. Little things, yes, but most days are made of little things.
Publication note: My poem “The Congresswoman’s Brain” was published on vox poetica’s today’s words page over the weekend. It is now on the poemblog. Many thanks to editor Annmarie Lockhart!
Rae Spencer 