Crows On My Path

I watched two crows on a wooded path
Along the river swollen with spring
The stained waters bubbling in its bends

Two crows strutting like old men
In black suits arrogant with swagger
Take flight together to a barren perch

This has been a long season of crows
Their caws echoing along the solitary
Paths of me always in snow and rain

The sun was bright and sky clear
The grass turned green in an instant
Buds on trees foiled by white clouds

Yet I see crows flying still from path
To tree like dark dreams they float
With night on outstretched wings

I am deaf today to the water rippling
In river current and song birds calling
From tall trees washed in sunlight

All I hear are two crows cawing from
The highest bone white limbs of a Sycamore
Refusing to be silenced by spring

Epicures and Me

My jeans are too tight and
I struggle with their buttons
She says I've gained weight
And I say my belly and rolls
Like the seven hills of Rome
Are a are a landmark of the
Beginning and the end of me

She says too much fat around
My heart as she finds food stains
On my toga and I hear the lictor
Whisper in my ear remember
That you are a mortal man as
I see the last light of sunset
Shining tonight across the Tiber

March Finches

Families of finches
Have built three nests
Under the porch awning

On a narrow ledge on
Spring days I watch their
Lighter than love mating

Like two autumn leaves
Blown together by the wind
In feather-light collision

Under overcast skies
With snowflakes falling
Blonde straw nests

Draw my eyes with their
Brightness and hanging stands
Disheveled and blowing

Like wind blown hair of three
Girls walking side-by side on
Lakeshore Drive in early March

3/23/97

The sunset sinks between the overcast
And the horizon fills my back window
And if I were a painter I would be
Squeezing a tube of orange light paint
Snaking and coiling on a wooden palette

The snow is canvas clean on the ground and
The air is cold yet the color is hot on my face
Before brilliance drops behind Patricia Street
As color cools and overcast fills its place
With shades of butterscotch and peach

Sunday afternoon moves to evening in
Light shifting imperceptible as I watch
From my kitchen across my yard and
Over the line of low ranch housetops
Where my horizon begins and days end

Dark Sky

In dark Van Goeth skies
Purple with pasty clouds
Crowds of crows fly above
Disturbed fields

Wheat marked with motion
Of wind made waves in
Golden grain the color of
Sunlit water

Blonde waves rise from
A landscape of violet
And gold punctuated by
Black waves

Flying into threating skies
From fields stretching
Flattened by wind of an
Oncoming storm

Despair rises to the height
Of a crow’s caw on a March
Morning after sunrise blocked
By clouds

Copyright © 1997 by Doug Tanoury. All Rights Reserved.

Poetry Magazine