Bird-card for Lingis

 

Not unlike    

sparkler flowers    will you    snuff a bunch

of birthday comets--tails of light, hearts of blue-- 

into pencils    of smoke

 

tilting horizon─   bird ferns negated   against strings of fading yellow

set the mood  for a dazzle of mulberry bats  

those macabre flying streamers   erupting    from blind spots

 

correspondence never being our ruffle

we hung around street lamps and through a scrub of verdelho    

and glass-stemmed leaves   watched the two-legged hop

of a harlequin bird 

 

a tiny clay bull, finger-marked       (pressed with    

we placed on a crown of fractured white cake   and waved flags

stiff & moulting    the dust

of red feathers 

 

below fringe of boldness   (hope    a feathered thing 

two eyes: one silver

the other gold--    visit Paris do you ever, mistake your wife for a cat?

I asked    into your watch-face    where clucked a beak

of curved   desuetude  

an eider of rainbow    quilted in wing

and song    wing and scribble    water and

candle 

 

. . . . .

 

harlequin bird dips back into nightfall   

leaving a track of coco-

nut claws     caring not a spider   about crass niceties

or the lugubrious kissing

of glitter    good-

byes