Rite of Spring

Common Grackles rested

on the naked Maple canopy.

Like aneurysms waiting

to burst into flight

they bent the thinning branches.

 

They had every rite of spring.

Some of them loitered

through the winter

and saw their reflections on ice.

What freedom to stay.

 

Christ stayed on the tree

and burst unto death

and burst into flight.

 

Murder

When came the light upon the eastern ridge,

the trees crowned with fire hold black winged fight.

A day awake and yawning and a murder

skips across the gaps in the canopy.

Yet again they talk boisterously

and aid interruption of created

things besides myself.

I simple black line of poetic insistence.

Flying punctuations.