Evening In the Trees

Out behind my house
birds roost year round in the evergreens
that stand like hundreds of Christmas trees
waiting for Christmas morning. Sparrows,
white-capped and chipping varieties, cardinals,
males are sundown-red, females dark pearled-red.
The smaller birds are constant sound and presence.
Jays, red wings, the cardinals, fill these trees
with cracking whistles, staccato song,
and colors like ornaments on the branches.
Under the moldy brown locust tree
robins shimmy in the stone-brown birdbath,
dressing for their twilight symphony,
bright-eyed and whispering us all to sleep.
 ***

August Morning

The large white fence is a shadow
hanging in morning mist. Across the field,
the blank white air absorbs chuttering geese,
and my neighbor's popping lawnmower.
The same mist floats in papered layers
over the lounging hummocks of grass-covered hills,
gathering in depressions like the spirits
of rotting snow drifts, winter in August.
***

Working Conversation

In the city a factory struggles at work.
Long low uneven building veined with piping.
Spikes of unguent steam drape the flat roof.
Men and women stand on boxes in the maws of large machines,
they could be making cans for beer or calendars with moons
that wax and wane from page to page.
Conversation engages all the senses,
shouted hand signals, always the same tone of voice.
Questions asked in the tumult, answered when it stops,
meaning lost when it restarts.