January 2022
Bio Note: Sometime in the fall V-V's editor Jim Lewis had a hopeful dream about a hummingbird which he shared with the contributing editors. Trish Knoll and I decided to collaborate on a poem taking its title from the phrase “The Thing With Feathers," in thanks for all his work and dedication to Verse-Virtual.
On another front, my book of linked short stories, titled “House Stories,” has been published by Adelaide Books. Robert Wexelblatt kindly contributed a recommendation. You can take a look at it here and also find it on Amazon.
On another front, my book of linked short stories, titled “House Stories,” has been published by Adelaide Books. Robert Wexelblatt kindly contributed a recommendation. You can take a look at it here and also find it on Amazon.
The Thing With Feathers
flies in with a message held inside a wind that ruffles the bamboo window blinds.
Thunderbird squawk or owl monosyllables about who is cooking.
Who is cooking bloodberries that only birds can eat. Who ripped down the pea crop, late bloomers, tangled the vines. Who. We said who. We repeated who.
Who does the vulture seek?
That thing with feathers is seldom where you look first. Ventriloquists. Around the corner, next tree. My grandson mimics the chickadee perfectly.
A dee dee dee.
Who did he listen to?
Mourning dove and melancholy. Gray feathers on a bird that lumbers
from telephone wires to beneath the feeder.
Small head on the dove. Make of the message what you will.
Count spots and uncertain skies to play at necromancy.
Drones with wires for feathers. To guide the bomb.
Better to look at the canopy of trees you can’t otherwise see.
Or visit the red tail hawk on the side of the apartment building.
You just don’t know who is there
when we’re so far afield from the hummingbird who came in a dream.
Who fled south for the winter.
Everyone says this little bird’s visit was a good thing.
An end to the worst. A beginning of greatness.
A ray carved out of sun brings hope’s curiosity to your face.
Trust glimmers. Muscle keeps hummers lifted.
A collaborative poem with Tricia Knoll
High School
I waited at the corner
teased kisses from the dark
The touch of hands made me weak
Younger days
standing silent on the edge of things
protecting something, what was it?
Do I still have it?
Who should I trust?
Two few friends to form a circle
No light at all some weeks
I carried little books
in which I confessed next to nothing
Treaded widely within childhood’s
rutted wheel,
school rooms, hallways, buses,
the print shop of the adolescent vow
Lined-paper letters,
love love love
A breath upon a naked flame
Cradled in stubby fingers,
fearing shadows and shindigs,
exposure, raw regret
spinning in that same small circle
never so far that I forgot a phone number,
a face, a name
Early winter cold-shock days
Do they still come?
Can I stoop and find them yet
in some dusty corner?
The hushed pleasure of private wounds,
the silences,
solitary mouths, survivalist retreats
The light was out there, somewhere
I looked, or, merely, moved about
wandered in the darkness,
losing to be found
Let’s Not and Say We Did
We will show our faces in the sunlight,
a mild, but seasonable day in, for instance, late February
when the wind sings sociably,
like the birds of March,
and we are all getting somewhat ahead of ourselves
And go in person, our corporeal selves,
to the halls wherein the soundtrack of common life
is yet celebrated, purified, challenged, interrogated
and expressed with a strong, or sad or silly expression,
like an actor trying on masks
And we shall recess together to a situation
of reclining, close enough one person to the next
that by chance, the merest accident, fingers may touch,
elbows rub, and we will sit as if in council,
but in fact doing no more than feeding our naked faces,
or laughing at our exaggerated sense of gleefully participating
in all we have not done.
©2022 Robert Knox
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