Everything We Always Knew Was True. James Galvin

Чтение книги онлайн.

       Natura Morta

      —for Craig Arnold

      I

      I don’t mind one or two

      Turkey buzzards spooling

      Over my head in a famously

      Heart-torn Western sky.

      It doesn’t mean anything.

      They’re just doing their job.

      They aren’t complaining, either.

      I don’t mind a dozen or so

      Such birds cruising over a carcass

      Like teenagers round a Dairy Queen.

      They’re just out to get some.

      That is all it means.

      II

      But at the BBQ

      On Independence Day

      2008,

      When Craig played guitar,

      And everybody sang,

      When all we were doing was toasting

      The dregs of our freedom, saying

      Good-bye to our Constitution,

      Hundreds of buzzards, maybe thousands,

      Frenzy-flocked over Beth’s yard,

      A black blizzard of rancid

      Plumes—I don’t know what

      It meant, but it meant something.

      III

      My lady draws flowers for hours and hours—

      Pistils and stamens, stems and veins,

      Paintbrush, wild iris, sage leaves and phlox—

      Black ink shines from her pen

      Or the finest available sable tip.

      Sometimes she mixes feathers and flowers,

      Birds and blossoms, transforming forms

      Into swift fragile lines, colors and fragrances

      Stroked into irrefutable black.

      She captures motion with motion,

      Stops it cold—irises dying,

      Hummingbirds hovering, all

      In breathtaking cuttlefish code.

      She never draws buzzards so far as I know.

      IV

      Then I’m out fixing fence, tightening

      And splicing the snow-broke wires.

      I pull off the road into the sage and flowers,

      And the fragrance under my tires explodes

      Into the still summer air.

      I think of her sketchbook that burgeons and blossoms

      Into a black blizzard when she closes it.