April 2022
Bio Note: It's March, of course, as I'm preparing this submission for Verse-Virtual's April issue, and in Michigan, winter is teasing us with its occasional almost-warm day (supposedly 60 tomorrow) followed by another spate of snow or sleet or both. So I think about and watch for the return of the birds who haven't hung around all winter and otherwise encourage myself by writing cautiously encouraging poems. I live in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan, and my tenth collection, Mobius Trip, dropped in October 2021 from Dos Madres Press.
Field Notes from an Old Chair
Well, they’ve come, these early crews though it’s only March, which in Michigan means maybe warm one day, the few new tender greens making sense, then frigid and snow the next four, fragile bodies ballooned, all fuzz but feeding and competing just the same. Who would’ve ever guessed you’d be happy anticipating birds? Since you’ve taken up the old folks’ study of how certain species seem to like each other, showing up in sync like the field guides specify, your chair’s been scribing the short, inside arc between the feeder and where you’ll catch a bloody sun going down. Then, mornings, if you forget, two doves startle you when you startle them from a window well, and as if the titmice and chickadees, finches and nuthatches can read they trade places on perches all day— size, you notice, and no doubt character determining order, amount, duration. At this point you could’ve written the pages on juncos or on your one song sparrow so far, plumped and content to peck along the deck beneath. And that pair of cardinals you’d hoped for? They’ve set up shop somewhere in the hedgerows and for now eat together, appearing to enjoy each other’s company, while all above out back crows crisscross the crisp expanse between the high bones of trees and the high ground that runs the dune down to the loosened shore. Soon hawks will hover, and when a bloated fish washes up overnight, luring vultures to join the constant, aimless gulls, you’ll be amused you ever worried that the birds would never come.
Originally published in Grand Haven Tribune
Tracing Your Two Lines
There’s the one that goes round and round with each revolving day, sunset to sunset. For that, your eyes, looking west, would streak the long exposure like faint tail lights arcing away over recurring hills. The other is different. It doesn’t depend on where you stand, which way you face. No matter, it releases from the daily spin and wanders, a twirling girl’s sparkler in the dark. Try pointing to any spot on a globe. Make it the capital of any troubled country and after that miniature world turns your finger in perfect circles watch your fingertip trace the course it takes as you continue your trail from here to eternity. You’ll see it zigzags a singular presence over the earth’s assorted surfaces, drawing its own conclusions— like you in this world, scratching out a meandering, your own universe, your own one-line sketch of this far-fetched existence.
Originally published in Lost Enough Finishing Line Press
©2022 D. R. James
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL