My sister – camping on the coast
Muttering over macaroni
Fixing salad
Talking to a seagull

“George” mews like a cat
awaiting dinner
Waddling web-foot along the stony cliff
To him – life is a handout
against the backdrop of the setting sun
Garlic bread, spaghetti, chocolate chip cookie –

My sister adopts things
What was ever wild after?
Even this “Master of the Wind”
eats Italian tonight!

Till the “Alpha Bird”
younger stronger
spots the eye of orange on plate of white –
Whirls in on protest and demand
George responds in kind
Intruder seizes a meatball
George squawks and lunges
his last...
_

The sunset on the Maine coast tonight
enthroned in vaporous haze
Imbued with fragrance-- ocean rose
The sky-- delicate
mountain laurel pink
bleeding into purple
where the tallest spires of spruce
have stabbed upward
From the coastline's rock
comes qweedling of the robins
calls of sea birds in the peaceful distance....
__

        ….George struggles in Alpha's grip
on windpipe
Meal forgotten
as nature serves its worst
His neck arched back
Wings fluttering desperate
in his last display
a spray of feathers
Strength will take this day
Plunge it into faint squawks
George dissolves limp in quivers

as Alpha--
weightless victor
lifts away

Suzy cries out
despair at loss of little friend
        “I can't! I can't!

I rush out to hold  
his last limp sigh

...tossing his gray and white into another sky

summer has burned up,
blown past, the thermometer
sinks stone-like, its silvers
dulled in metal tombs
no longer spiking red.

the wet leaf hangs lower
on the twig, the bird balances
on the branch, the day
fragments, its grey clouds
flowing under swiftly
closed doors.

the stars tremor in the water,
breathe of sky and silver bird,

the night is a closed eye, a
river of frost
where the dark, born
of root and shaded dream,
stretches like a flower;

the shadows lengthen
dissolve into wooden gate
and hollowed out tree.

the night’s stones weigh
heavy like the cloud.

everything sinks.

the cry of a bird like
the shiver of a stream,
water-thick, eerie as
a ghost.

the heady scents of the night
speak of surrender,
of lost horizons,
of windows flung
open to the stars.

a cat wires his claws to the
dark, drops down from a wall,
lands with his fur full of sky.

On calm sunsets under the tree..
The sun speckles dim..
And turns into glow..
Replaced by moonlit kisses..
That find their way to my eyes..
I dream of you..
While I am awake..
The night tide comes in..
And I am caught in its undertow..
I flow away into true dream..
Where day and night or one..
The never to be mixture..
Under the tree looking up..
Both moon and sun kiss my eyes..
The night and day fusion create new colors..
A jumble of rays and lights never seen before..
This interlace of cosmic reverie delight..
Was the color of my thoughts...