The Flamingo


The pink of her plumage
is borrowed from the shells of shrimp she
snaps from the muddy grasses, as step-by-step
she extends her stride across
a kingdom not river, not sea,

safe because she is a replica
of another and another, copies every one.
She gazes.  She gazes again,
            a hunter
of no cunning, a swimmer of no depth.
Even her beauty is doubtful--
peering, straightening,
she drips water from a beak
too bent to be a weapon, too mute for song.
Emptily alert, she is

as tall as she needs to be
to attend to the multitude
that feeds in salt-shallows trodden green,
rises to cloud the sun,
and descends again to
reedy afterthought.  Nothing is hers.

The Bee

A ricochet,
she races, lingers,
hurries to be forgotten,
the single vowel of a teeming alphabet,
too small to carry meaning.
Privation and bright colors,
these are what stir the amber full-stop,
this fragment made of hunger.

Dawn too cool,
noon too hot, where is peace
for this searcher? The chapter is the same,
beginning and beginning,
another blossom with a secret nearly as sweet
as its promise.

Almost followed by almost,
she survives beyond knowledge.
Even her dance of distance and direction
is the gavotte of decimals learning a new

place among the zeroes, notes finding a new
high-point within the octave as she
zig-zags, color to color,
clover to fuchsia to sage
in the only daylight.

 And I'll add a new bee artwork soon.