Cacciatorepoetry.net

Crow’s Feet

It was so hot, even the birds couldn’t stand the heat! I wish I could write more poems that are this succinct … but I always seem to have more to say.

From my perch across the street,
Shaded from the stifling heat,
I watched a crow pick up his feet
For a moment of august relief.

Curious Sight

curious-sight

Inspired by a true story … all the way down to the paint-splattered sneakers. This was written just as I was really starting to understand the genius of Billy Collins.

I just learned today that wild turkeys sleep in trees —
I mean way, way up in trees, like fifty to a hundred feet.

Funny, all this time I thought they slept along the ground,
Huddled together amidst the brush, finding warmth
In the closeness of each others’ plumage, and the shared heat
Of their white and dark meat.

But I was wrong. A hunter friend insists they zip up trees
And rest their succulent carcasses on protruding limbs in the sky.
(Imagine after all these years I never knew that.)

Well, tonight, after everyone is asleep, I will slip on
My hooded sweatshirt and paint-splattered sneakers,
And search for the turkey family that’s been stopping traffic
In my neighborhood, with their strutting and drumming
And brightly colored wattles.

Yes, tonight, I will tiptoe atop the hardened snow,
With my head and neck tilted back, and shine my light
Way, way up into the pine trees that surround my home,
In search of a band of roosting turkeys.

It promises to be a most curious sight.

Flight of the Monarch (Extract)

Not one of my favorites … so I’ve included only two stanzas here. I love the idea that a beautiful butterfly craves the poisonous milkweed plant — something very film noir about that. That stanza has some nice alliteration, too.

Enriched, the monarch beams,
Orange-brown glory rich and ablaze;
Turning peasants into gentility,
Lo, weeks to seven Sundays!

Then, furtive and flitting,
Artfully, it changes speeds.
(Unabashed in its fondness for flowers,
It craves the deadly milkweed.)

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Pigsticking

Considered ugly and vile, boars, as it turns out, painstakingly build nests on the ground to give birth in comfort. Found that very noble. The title is a slang term used for boar-hunting in which “noblemen” pursue boars on horseback and kill them with spears.

Shuttled branches and bracken,
Spotted shards of bark —
A temporary mattress
In a wood hardscrabble,
Weaved by the poor-sighted boar.
Now she rests her bristled cheek;
Now she hefts her gravid teats;
And resets her mid-obese, —
Until there’s seven piglets more,
Tearing up the Old World floor.

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Spikes in Temperature

Woodpecker vs. cactus … an age-old battle. In the last line, the reader needs to switch the accent to the last syllable on “paucity” to make the rhyme come alive. A favorite ploy of mine.

The red-belly’s bill rapid-fires amidst,
A burnt Sonoran reach, and
Into the stem of a lone cactus,
Whose thistles dint the prickly heat.
Yet although the saguaro is teethed, to
Dissuade a woodpecker’s siege,
‘Tis a careful joust that he accepts,
To tap its cache of rich insects,
In this stretch of dry paucity.

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