Poetry Magazine Andrena Zawinski

USA

ON ANCIENT WINGS 
IN JANUARY

The little black grackles keep coming back 
   for more.  
They pick stale caramel corn from the sack, 
   swallow 
them whole, toe-dancing snowdrifts, all bobs 
   in the delight 
of the find.  Even city doves wait their turn 
   in the blizzard 
of birds, in the yes yes yes of it.

   One flies 
a warning, yellow-eyed at my face, as if 
   I would 
rush her feathers for a spicy hat, her belly 
   for a bit 
of meat to glaze, breast a bone from which 
  to pull a wish.  
From where I stand behind the window glass,  
   it is only this 
upon which I fix my eyes and my desire--

   the wind 
along lacy wing bars, early light that flirts 
   a wash 
across the crown, sheen on bellies and bobs. 
   If these                        	   
blackbirds survive the cold another morning, 
   then so will I.  
We have these things that hold us here, 
   this watch, 
sweet feast, the voiceless scavenging-- 
   the yes oh yes of it.

Credits:
This poem is from the author's manuscript, Wildfires, 
and has appeared in Rockhurst Review: A Fine Arts Journal

CHIAROSCURO  
FOR REFLECTED LIGHT

(inspired by Louis MacNeice's Snow)

Sometimes the way the light moves in and spins 
the chime of porcelain gulls to streak across 
the drawn and muted shade, I'm taken back 
beneath a tinsel rain on waves that ebb out 
to the sea. Sometimes the way the light slips 
through a crack inside the frame before a freeze,
all arms and legs, I forage angels from the snow 
and laugh out loud at winter running wild again.

Sometimes when light ruffles edges of paper slips, 
notices of half-done things, it travels dream in all 
things touched and yet to be. Sometimes so dazzling
brilliant resplendent, the mere delight in light will 
swell the room, and I can see there is more than this 
squint of glass between the sun and the shade.

Credits:
This poem appears in Traveling in Reflected Light,
a collection of poetry from Pig Iron Press by the author
and has appeared in Plainsongs and in Petroglyph.