poetry about birds, a mother mantis, and your choice to live
Let Us Learn How to Love From the House Finches
Let us learn how to love
from the house finches,
two as one.
Their infallible devotion to each other
binds the wind to the sky
binds the straw, twigs, string
to the inner sanctuary of the arborvitae,
their new spring home.
Let us learn fidelity
from the house finches,
two as one
they desire no other, forever.
Their flight crisscrossing the lawn,
a wedding dance mid-air in the
March morning light.
Let us learn about eternity
from the house finches,
their days, feasting on insects
and singing arias to each other,
gather like autumn leaves under the waning sun.
Then their perfect love and faithfulness
Opens the sky to heaven.
Copyright 2020/Glenn Armocida
Poetry
Silencer
It is humbling.
To not startle a creature that you assume would fear a man
but who, instead, considers me with a look of bored disdain;
I shall acknowledge you. Now I will ignore you.
A saw-whet owl, brown and white feathered lightning,
diminutive
but oh, what a heart of stone.
He is silence that delivers silence,
commanding the dark frost of this sheer January night
as he waits atop the curve of the iron birdfeeder,
calculating the angle and velocity of his flight to satisfaction,
considering his warm night meal bubbling its life into his core.
I know his prey,
mottled voles, field mice and star-nosed moles.
I have followed their tunnels stitching the snow across the yard,
met them at their tufted homes in the deep grass along the fence row,
cursed their fevered wreckage in the perennial garden.
Is it wrong to be happy that this predator is ready?
Minus the moles the delphiniums will dazzle.
But what of that moment, the last instant of knowing
the talons piercing beak ripping hot eyes searing?
That moment hunts us all, stalking
mice and men, sparrows and whales, lichens and oaks
even the saw-whet owl, silencer on the wing
has his date with death.
But not on this night.
He is gone, swift and brief
as an echo.
Copyright 2020/Glenn Armocida
Poetry
Will You?
Take this moment, this now.
And again, this one moment,
the weight of a sigh,
and as heavy as the light of a billion days.
Will you
take hold of the cloud above you,
born times uncountable
just to delight the child and
soak the summer clover, the blue heron?
Will you
burn this day pursuing things and chasing deadlines,
while you dance on a blade’s edge
a ballet between the first
and last breath?
Will you
take hold of the ripples
on the pond
on the pond
on the pond
drink them with your lover? Your soul?
Will you
blow across the landscape of your life like an autumn leaf
or take this one moment by the hand and not let go?
You could just exist.
It is easy and as common as clay.
Or you could swim to the sky
embracing this moment given to you
with only one string – love upon love.
Copyright 2020/Glenn Armocida