NEED

From the moment our lips rose and reached blindly

for that first soft tit connecting us to survival

we sucked survival into us, were alert in every cell,

our cell’s needing to continue.

Our hunger for air, dry sustenance

already active in our lungs coupled gloriously

with thirst for sweet liquid, not tasting of the sea,

the ocean of salt chemical where we had formed.

We, immigrants to this dry world,

learned the essential acts immediately: Breathe. Drink.

All the rest would come presently.

All the rest we’d assimilate, absorb as needed, as necessary.

Our small bodies set to work taking air and food,

taking warmth, taking pleasure of holding arms

and also giving warmth, giving softness,

opening the blind jewels of our eyes, our smiles

to dazzle and charm lest our droppings of waste

disgust whatever out there held us.

We commanded our planet, our kingdom,

cried in rage if one aspect was uncomfortable,

in murderous rage if it were taken from us:

the warmth, the food, the tit and territory.

All else we¹d learn later, on larger scales:

making lives, nations, wars as needed, as necessary.

FLYING PELICAN

based on “Flying Pelican” by Michael Felber

It wasn¹t the flying pelican itself that stopped me in mid gallery
nor the tight tiny feathers on the V of its wingspan
nor the wee seed of an eye peering fierce as an eagle
straight ahead. It hovers like a broach of filigree jet marquisette
pinned center on a pale blue veil of watercolor sky.

Unless I go as a tourist I will not be again in Florida, on a causeway
where pelican flight locks onto the speed of my car like a guided missile
parallel to my window, heavy feathered flesh bound nestward again
cargoed with gifts from the sea, hopeful the life there waits hungrily
to feed and thrive and sign the love the pelican lives for.

Caught in mid flight by Felber the artist this exquisitely drawn bird
swoops toward the roiling ocean of my heart¹s confusion, pulling out
in one lush scoop the slippery schoolmates of ambivalence and guilt.
What do I now owe my Father? What in return for donation of seed
and meager sustenance before I flew off unprotected far too soon?

Felber¹s color pencil pelican is magical in the sharpness of his line.
Each overlap of wing and leg, of layered bill reads clear and stings,
razoring into my eye my Florida Father. This paper pelican¹s bill,
furled umbrella close, unfinished, speaks no narrative beyond itself.
This pelican is art, not ornithology. It questions, not instructs.

The underbelly of the drawn bird undulates an accurate reveal
of bone under the feathered skin. Just so my Father¹s bones push
outward, skin detailed in overlap and line as if with Felber¹s touch.
He sits in his assisted room, in isolated center, held like mat and frame
hold Felber¹s bird and our attention, mute. Man and pelican.

LAW

Along the garden fence the body of a dead bird.

My client, my cat, denies knowledge of the event.

Her being out Tuesday, grassing herself,

Is apparently pure coincidence.

CATS IN THE WINDOW by Pat Austin

Rain all night. Now near noon
fine mists fill spaces between bullets of rain.
Muted reds, yellows, greens ,burgundies
color the velvet trees and carpet the street
with a smokier tweed of leaves.

Wheels of my car hiss on wet flakes.
What is not soft crackles a licorice black,
slick and wet. Dazzles of light as if from
shattered mirror glass scatter edges
of metallic things in dizzying confusion.

In innumerable windows
dry cats silhouette themselves
against dark interiors of unlit rooms,
their clean fur glowing warm colors–
orange and milk, honey, the gray of pearl—
sitting, some with eyes half closed, some wide,
taking in my car, the rain, the odd passerby.
All across the city, cats watch as if with one mind
Inscrutable but alert.

###

THE MAN SLEEPS by Pat Austin

The man sleeps.

His woman watches over him.

He sleeps on his side, motionless.

The bench on which the man sleeps

and the woman sits

is concrete.

She has arranged their clothes

in a tidy triangle

upon a blanket.

The blanket rests against a low wall

at the edge of the city park.

The wall is made of concrete.

She is large and solid as if poured into place and hardened.

She guards his head

with her ample hip.

Her face faces the blanket on the sidewalk, against the wall,

maybe guarding also

the small food cartons at the blanket’s edge.

Her dress, sweater, hair, his pants, jacket, skin

are all aggregates of gray

except for the visor cap covering his face.

The cap is bright green.

###

OJCZYN: A POLISH STEPFATHER by Pat Austin

Third time you tell that story on this day
among repeats of other village tales
you are more there than when you were—
You, heaving hundred kilo sacks of flour
like feather pillows onto wagon beds.

You are sixteen and strong as men of thirty two,
toss sacks until the iron axles creak,
and still you’ll sing the dirt road into town
and dance girls into exhaustion by the dawn—
perfumed by sweat and horseshit, as you say,

with miller’s daughter pleading for your love
and farmer’s sons begging you for mercy. Then
the horse, white, “Beautiful” her name,
submits, no whip, to your light whistle-click
and hoists wood wheels from ruts of hard pack mud.

I hear this and my heart goes chalk and dry
to see how ninety years have punished you.
But I’ve lost interest in the best revenge.
My mother is why I’m here,
and I listen out of courtesy to her.

Your feet stomp carpet to demand some feel.
Your mind floats like your kneecap, there and not,
of dubious value in this place, this time.
Old Slav, you’d still be dangerous, I think,
if rage unhitched you from your Lay-Z-Boy.