The Spot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Spot

 

 

The black spot came on a sunny day.

It was small but full as a school for ants

each one learning to swarm, to eat, to

serve the next. Where will I go when they

finish with me, in autumn rain when

I fall like a leaf

from the tree of my life.

 

All my souls will be flying on the wind,

a storm of stories ahead of the wavering night.

I trace with a crow's feather the map

they travel on my skin 

the winding and the blowing away. Which

dark bird dropped it, what ink has dripped it

on time's page, the black spot that came

 

on a sunny day

and will not go away. 

March 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for the Word Garden Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images:Ants, © Dunja Zubak  via internet   Fair Use

Crows in flight, via internet author unknown    Fair Use

Lincoln Frees The Owls

 

 

 Lincoln Frees The Owls

Your father had

a cloud of blackbirds,

your mother a wake

of buzzards. You

 

were more ambitious.

You wanted Athena's owls,

or else to play Lincoln. You

had the bones for it, and you

 

bought the hat, but feathers

stuck in your throat

when you began to speak

about emancipation.

 

The owls never complained

about the long hours

you made them be still

on your lap, the skinny mice

 

you gave them. (It was

unfortunate about the butterflies,

but an owl has to eat.)

In the end we left you, 

 

the owls and I, in front of

the Ford Theater where later

we would all find out

what it means to be really free.

February 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for

the Sunday Muse