Three hawks I saw & a crow on a day when the rain drizzled down from the shroud overcast on our hills, wings in spray, wings (brown tops, white bottoms, farmers’s tans) weighed with water or now dripping, dripping inken-black, now flinging ringlets of rain as they dove into blades of the green (also wet) or sopping crops (that needed those sky-slops) catching mouse-like-things-soggy in their mouths (beaks) and rising again to dead oak trees, truncated by light and fire or human hands in storms or for the “necessary evil” of power lines and waiting, waiting (three in the tree and the crow across the way) for the presence of life (life or lack thereof respectively) for a dive-dive-dive or a slow-flap after the remnants of overcast.
And I drive on past on the wet WW highway, double-yellow roadway upanddownandleftandright over runnels with far off woodlots pressing near and breaking out, flocking and parting and lighting (like I always envisioned a drive through The Shire might be) until crests the hill a red brick chapel with white-framed stained-glass and a white-box belfry capped in grey shingles indistinguishable from the asphalt heavens, grey gaps of God that break apart its peak into seen-unseen-seen-unseen and again seen until the cross tops veiled somewheres in them grey clouds, grey rain resetting the saturation scale of the world to its factory setting: vibrant.
Behind it, the cemetery of a small Missouri township of thirty-three homes.
Hawks and crow in the rain, thriving off of life and death and life again.
…wait, I’m sorry…
Rather, thriving off of
rain.
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For newcomers — a note on 50 @ 25:
Once upon a time, I read that the perfect age for writing quality poetry is twenty-three. Apparently most of T.S. Elliot’s stuff came out then, the rest of his work being supposedly non-poetic. This resulted in 46 poems written at 23.
These poems came out exponentially faster and faster before my 24th birthday on April 30th – and I had to write in genres spanning from epic ballads to limericks to get 46 in on time. I guess that means, for better or worse, that’s the best poetry I’ll ever write. Sad day.
Who was I kidding?
Milton was blind and old—oooooold—when he publishedParadise Regained. Emily Dickenson was dead when her stuff came out. My favorite stuff from T.S. Elliot came out after his conversion. So yeah, old age is good for poetry too. Look at Burns and Berry.
(Side note: the name “Berry Burns” sounds like a shady car salesman).
Will I keep up this twice-my-age regimen every few years? Who knows, but this year, here’s to 50 poems at 25 to be written exponentially faster until I turn 26 on April Thirtyish. I do it this the second time around as a way to say: “Here’s to living life well before it’s too late.”
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