all day long you wring yourself out
work virtually
go nowhere
brain exclusively tuned
to end-times music
till twilight arrives
to fold you in blue pleats of evening
a flock of night herons flaps past
across the sky or your mind
it’s the same either way
long-closeted thoughts rise with them
winging out from daytime roosts
to forage swamps and wetlands
to nest in groups
black-crowned birds who croak like crows
swoop low over mangroves
the whirr of wings
real or imagined
blurs trivial things
strange-times lullabies
declare doom looms
everyone’s muzzled
mired in dread
the future’s not mutual
it’s mute or dead
everybody misses everybody
try to ride it out
as night herons seek
what the sun
will someday summon us to
after endless-seeming exile
a prayer to be spared
I shall be satisfied, when I wake, with thy likeness
a psalm’s promise
the night herons keep flying toward
tomorrow’s garlands
Month: February 2022
Facing It by Yusef Komuyakaa
My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn’t
dammit: No tears.
I’m stone. I’m flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I’m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet’s image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I’m a window.
He’s lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.
The Anthology 