Behold My Red Eye

Most of the Wood Ducks have moved on. But this guy remembers, 

and sometimes comes and sits on the end of the stair-rail. 

He is a duckling-of-this-year and may even be one of the 13 ducklings

that were the first batch to hatch. You can see how his adult face-markings 

are not quite complete, and he still has some juvenile body-feathers;

but he is getting there! I was very happy to see him today 

and moved very quietly to take his photograph.

Keeping It Together

For a start you use

tea and talk, the day's

first dark headlines

and your dreams go

numb--that looming face

pretending to be a ripe

harvest moon stands still,

then fades to a dot 

like a TV turned off.

Next your delicacy gathers

in the eggs you carry

to the stove--the shells

are so thin these days,

they break into

such small pieces.

You drive over those pieces

to the delights of key,

office, mail and the heady

vertigo buried in

the heart of grammar.

(Oh, be with me now,

muse of the commasplice!)

Such rich incident carries

you to three, though the clock

is so hesitant, pausing so long,

as if holding its breath

before its nervous leap forward.

And finally the omens:

Scrawny birds on that 

skimpy tree out your window,

the exit marked Graceless,

and rain whispering

its million run-on sentences.

Vern Rutsala       (February 5, 1934 – April 2, 2014)

How We Spent Our Time, 

University of Akron Press, 2006, pages 41-42.

This book is also inscribed 

to the former owner in teensy writing: 

                                                                                                                 All the best, Vern Rutsala

This generation of poets is fast leaving the planet. If you meant 

to write any fan letters, now might be the time. 

I wish I had thanked them more...