"mulched" poems - Hello Poetry

all day long, their banging disturbed me at my work startling me from my reverie, lost deep in the world of I Wish I Had A Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman the birds, returned early from wherever it is they hide during the long winter, have come to fling themselves against the over-sized picture window in my living room, songbird pitch themselves into my poet's dull daytime so that i am moved to rise from my desk, to look out, to seek a bird flying away, or peer down to search for the tiny body maybe roosting among the stalks of the overgrown hydrangea, which captured autumn’s maple leaves, worn like a Chicago matron's mink to keep the winter chill at bay and, as the spring surrenders to the warmer days, i mow the brightly greened grass, innocently cutting row after row, to turn finally to the narrow strip nearest the picture window, a mixture of grass, dried leaves and tiny twigs, all mulched by the power mower, where i discover these dessicated bodies exhumed from shallow graves at the base of the newly leafed hydrangea, their stiff, dry feathers bristly, colored a washed out grey, tiny feet tightly balled, with all the soft parts missing and the beaks a startling white, as though bleached, bright against the dullness of the little corpses which seem to have sunk into the mosses of the yard, so that they lay preserved below the blade for the first late-spring chore -- mowing the bird bone garden i sleep with the bedroom window ajar despite the overnight chill and dream of the memory of birds, their shapes, their white beaks and, still, the bird songs wake me in the cool green spring morning

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May 18, 2012

May 18, 2012 at 8:56 AM UTC

john-mahoney

mowing the bird bone garden

all day long, their banging disturbed me at my work startling me from my reverie, lost deep in the world of I Wish I Had A Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman the birds, returned early from wherever it is they hide during the long winter, have come to fling themselves against the over-sized picture window in my living room, songbird pitch themselves into my poet's dull daytime so that i am moved to rise from my desk, to look out, to seek a bird flying away, or peer down to search for the tiny body maybe roosting among the stalks of the overgrown hydrangea, which captured autumn’s maple leaves, worn like a Chicago matron's mink to keep the winter chill at bay and, as the spring surrenders to the warmer days, i mow the brightly greened grass, innocently cutting row after row, to turn finally to the narrow strip nearest the picture window, a mixture of grass, dried leaves and tiny twigs, all mulched by the power mower, where i discover these dessicated bodies exhumed from shallow graves at the base of the newly leafed hydrangea, their stiff, dry feathers bristly, colored a washed out grey, tiny feet tightly balled, with all the soft parts missing and the beaks a startling white, as though bleached, bright against the dullness of the little corpses which seem to have sunk into the mosses of the yard, so that they lay preserved below the blade for the first late-spring chore -- mowing the bird bone garden i sleep with the bedroom window ajar despite the overnight chill and dream of the memory of birds, their shapes, their white beaks and, still, the bird songs wake me in the cool green spring morning