A jackdaw is stealing
my tote bag of unused words,
a rodentlike kibitzer, a pecking dictator
of the worthiness of sounds.
If I run out of bullets now
he will take over my range,
blue-pencil my graffiti,
he will denounce me
as a purveyor of insensible languages,
a peddler of demonstrations
made for the amusement
of dabbling dilettantes.
Then I shall be defenseless.
I will have to render down
the fat of my mind
and when it is all as lean tree bark
it will be my own wickiup,
there I will wait
until he comes creeping again
into my larder, aiming to rob me
of my last cracked chicken bones,
my winter store
to make just a little broth
for my tongue.
Categories:
wickiup, poetry,
Form: Free verse
We have imagined a place like this,
sun-bleached,
prairie comfortable,
creaky,
chewed mellow by light.
We have hammered together
a structure of
easy happenstance.
A wickiup somewhere
between your homelessness
and mine.
We are inside this steeple of fingers.
A make-do space that serves
for what we have not cared
to cling to,
but love now to enter.
Categories:
wickiup, poetry,
Form: Free verse