Thursday, September 9, 2021

Thursday Twofer: Something, Something, Birds

                    A Pair of Doves

A pair of doves came to my sidewalk today

to peck for whatever it was that might hold them

there outside my front door.

Unruffled, they let me move about the garden

as I pulled Johnson grass and oooed over the first blooms

of this season on a loropetalum

that came not to the better

of the half-dozen newly planted earlier in June.

No, there with flowers was the runt of the litter

that had been stressed throughout the summer

and unyielding to my care.

I thought I might have to unearth it,

a rare casualty among the dozens of flowers

and shrubs I have set into this ground.

The doves fluttered up to the roof.

I laughed, for my want of faith,

and bowing low, returned to the task at hand.

Ladson 2014


Swans

perhaps it is too early in the season

to think that the swans must be going 

 

too early to think of the lake feathered

only by the winds that come with passing cold fronts

 

but on the bank where I sit

I watch

a swan with her young one

as if attached by a lead

never too far ahead or too far behind

 

of late these two have come calling

close to the place that is my perch

(the others paddling themselves into the distances)

 

is it my solitary figure that invites

or at least proffers no warning

 

perhaps some desire taking flight

that I yearn for within my world

where now I count in those trees

the first leaves yellowing that soon will be going

Ladson 2015

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