2 Poems

9-21-01

Postcard from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, to David Kirschenbaum. David, Built a second fire, first one stank, or at least hollowed the shanks of 2 logs so they sulked like valleys cowering here, under hills that end the monde.  Am in an inn now, but past the tree hall, down the Cabot Trail, you enter a National Anthem, mountains fall to their ocean deaths.  Oceans stretch to a flat line.  The smile that hides whales hides seals, eagles, moose, mannequins and irises. Senior. Black birds tend to blend together, surrender their types.  One of them must know who’s who.  That crow must know who lived and died last year.  But in blanched months, this one say, the dirt we walk on walks. Crow become crowd, dark throng.  March failed, was told to taper but it hanged there like a killed raven on a farm. Now dead walk I’m lost who’s who.