after John Ashbery

The birds opened their coffee klatch in earnest,
chatting the sky from black to blue in maybe
a hundred singing telegrams. I sipped coffee

and eavesdropped on the overlapping timbres
and turns of phrase in their feathered acrobatics.
Pick-up trucks grumbled past, into Wednesday,

more mind-reader than machine for engines
which sounded more like driver’s complaints
than random idling. Amid the light twittering,

a raven sounded a bass note twice. The other
birds stopped. Paused to listen? A long silence.
A second raven answered, more like laughing.

after John Ashbery

Fan blades whir. Between grass blades and a breeze of corn tortillas
frying in hot oil, my lawn stands a week higher than usual, tall
and deep green with its summer stretch. Twilight takes forever

to steep—a jar of sun tea, marking time. Dusk deepens, coated
with a patina of overripe figs, russet and seafoam. Emerald scarabs
orbited those globes all day, loud as propeller planes; they remain,

cluster motionless, bejewel the fruit, too far up-tree for squirrels
or myself to think of tasting—or so you’d think. Come morning,

I hear a rustle, see branches quake, a squirrel in the nautical sway
of his perch just long enough to nab a fig. Now if only my wits
would stop playing their carnival slight-of-hand—one walnut shell

with the past, another the present, the third a tease of radiance
threaded with nightfall. The tide washes in through wooden grain,

rings of the once-tree like record grooves, every tune captured,
saved into a playlist—what I never tire of hearing and what I never
want to recall, sometimes all at play simultaneously. Pick a melody,

a snatch of lyrics, and try follow it a few measures before another
imposes its independent words, rhythm and key. The squirrel has it
easier—just one fig to reach—provided it doesn’t lose its balance.