To Darwinism or Fowl Death

One of these days I will write in paragraphs again.  I have so much to say about the Bell Jar, whether or not anyone cares to read it, or this, but I don't want you to think I'm totally shirking on the intent of this blog.  Between moving into my own actual home, dealing with multiple deaths in the family, severing ties with most other family members and finally the suicide of my childhood best friend, it's all I can do these days to just write a poem a day, if that, which I have not been doing as religiously as I'd have liked.  So, here's another poetry month poem - quick and dirty, just how I wrote it.

To Darwinism or Fowl Death

an April showering of poetry by Angie. T. Jeffreys 2012

     Winter fingers gnarled green

vines blue feel like frozen lamp

     posts: I know better than to

swipe it with my tongue these weird

days, the winter fingers entwine with

      spring’s hot and gusty clasp:

     today, the cold hands cup

humid sweat like an ice sculpture

freezing in stone winter’s palm

lines and fingerprints into a red

               and dusty bird feeder

or when the temperature rises

     about another month or so.  Spring

waits for the sun bubble, floating beneath

the glassy window to bounce up like

 a basketball through the frozen water, 

rust so the birds can bathe and drink.

         The metal more brittle than ice spread

across the bird bath dish.  The brown

          birds are only wearing rust like

dried blood to hide their iron silhouettes. 

The cardinals all

fly straight into the window of

metallic ice, bleeding rouge now

or whichever color a bird’s

small brain turns as it bleeds out.  

They spank their heads to smithereens 

just because a cold wind blew today 

in April.  The shallow pool

freezing in swirls of pink like

old fashioned lollypops.  Still,

don’t lick the ice: you might get

stuck: the bird brain laughs like an

Rorschach Test skimming the top ice.  

This is Indian Winter, or the White 

Man’s Winter: swearing on mothers’ 

souls it can’t get worse than it keeps 

getting.  April’s birds  that dive from 

skies like pelicans, a free fall into

not what this bird bath felt like 

this time last year; warm and bodies

their brains in tact.  Statistically, the 

      survival rate’s only thing changed, 

numerically.  I could stop and take a

     photograph of cadavers splattered 

against smooth ice rock.  My masterpiece’d 

be titled: To Darwinism or Fowl Deaths.