Squirrel, Cuban cigar ash, hobbles a
powerline, whiskers erect, spine hunched,
pauses, stutter steps, tail resembling the
Nazca geoglyph carved into the Peruvian
desert, launches into a canter across
powerline stretched from a telephone pole
resembling the Temple Mount that intersects
four corners of our neighborhood to integrate
four families consisting of a newborn, one
biology teacher, one retired CPA, one poet,
one wandering black cat missing an ear tip,
plus two pit mixes, then just like an exhale
from pure Cuban tobacco, vaporizes beneath
the dazing shadows of a late October
Japanese maple.

Crabapples, golden & bunched like cherries,
hang among yellowgreen-spotted leaves
from the small grey tree.

Covering the ground,
rattlesnake leaves various shades
of red, palomino, tobacco.

Indigo bunting, hidden behind scaly bones
& thick brushstroke of lemon leaves,
peeps like a rubber sneaker across a vinyl floor.

December wind through nearby oaks
mocks the sound
of water washing cobblestones.

If I could be a single tree—maple, hickory
or crabapple—I’d shed my decadent
clothes in a heartbeat!

CROW ON A STREETLIGHT

1.
The crow on a streetlight
flutters like a black rag
in the chilly wind.

Is he poet or poem?
We have two choices.

Crow’s shadow traces
the curved waist
of a cascade green ’56 Corvette
to my left.

The vast stillness of this courtyard
disturbed by the rattle
of pecan leaves
as poets send their vibrations
across the landscape.

These vibrations lift the perfumed hair
of an amber Irish streetlight
& chase painted toucans
from a bulldozed brain cell.

2.
Impossible to experience life
one day to the next
without forgetting so many things.

Some say we’re lucky when our
solitude is interrupted by splintered
nerves stained by grief?

But I don’t see how.

Impossible to prove such a thing
while observing two thousand feet away.

At this moment our flames are
as close to the crow’s black wings
as we’ll ever dream.

3.
The crow on the streetlight
flutters like a black rag
in the chilly wind.

FISHING BENEATH THE 4-POINTS BRIDGE

Snatch that brim with a cane pole beneath the 4-Points bridge,
followed by two more lilting fins below the current, the current
of my life—the brim I discharged to go forth & propagate, despite
their near death experience I admonished them; otherwise, I've
managed to hook myself, middle-aged fins & all, lilting along the
currents of life, puffing on a sandbar, devoid of oxygen, belly-up.

THERE ARE LIVES NEVER IMAGINED

My only companion is a stork.

Pockets filled with rainwater,
plus whatever else they fill pockets with,
whoever they are.

So, I wait.

The bus comes by once
every feral eclipse.

So, I wait.

Horse & buggy, weak ankles, weak hinges & all.

They call 'em hinges, but I prefer ankles.

I don't mind having a stork
for my sacred companion.

Pockets full.

(Do not wait up for me this evening, for the night
will be black and white.)
   ~Nerval’s suicide note to his aunt Jeanne Labrunie

Gibberish notwithstanding,
I love Gérard de Nerval’s languid walks
to wherever it was he walked
at any given time.

Gibberish embraced by Apollinaire.
Gibberish, thankfully, still with us
but never so eloquently delivered
as by Gérard walking his
beloved lobster, Thibault,
on a long indigo ribbon
across the speckled gravel
of the Palais Royal.

Alan Britt, Reisterstown, Maryland