One white gull

Along the Crooked River (how many of these might there be in the USA?)

Probably not as many as there are of Bear Creek, Indian Creek, or Dutch Flat,

those names we collected again and again on our drives across the country.

My favorite adjacent creeks in our Michigan neighborhood

are called Mud Creek and Minnehaha Creek, which both cross

Pickerel Lake road within a few rods of each other.

We never made it back to Michigan this year 

and will miss the world-class autumnal splendor

that begins st the end of this month.

LEARNING TO SPEAK

As a child running loose,

I said it this way: Bird.

Bird, a startled sound at field's edge.

The sound my mouth makes, pushing away the cold.

So at the end of this  quiet afternoon,

wanting to write the love poems I've never written,

I turn from the shadow in the cottonwood

and say blackbird, as if to you.

There is the blackbird. Black bird, until its darkness

is the darkness of a woman's hair falling

across my upturned face.

As I go on speaking into the night.

The oriole, the flicker,

the gold finch . . .

Peter Everwine

Collecting the Animals, Carnegie Mellon, 2000

(Atheneum, 1972)

And now this volume of Peter Everwine goes back on the shelf until next year. 

He has been a favored find of this one.  jhh