Art credit: Catherine Simmons

(an ekphrastic)
						
“He rode over Connecticut…”
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
				-Wallace Stevens

I

You glistened into the orange forest 
without warning, frightened intolerably 
by October’s encroachment.
The only sound was the faint desperation 
of your futile attempts to keep your eye from rattling.

II

Ideas come in sixes.
This morning, while carrying them
to my nest,
I dropped them.
They shattered, 
and in shattering called out to me,
but I was powerless.

This unpretentious miscalculation caused me to weep.

III

We flew strong through the malicious blizzard, didn’t we?

Yes. And we also agreed that if we shared this slim branch
it would yield the truth	finally.

IV

What do you think about the idea that a crowd is singular?

What do you think about the idea that two blackbirds are a crowd?

V

The lights have been extinguished,
leaving exquisite shadowy outlines
in the shapes of scars on each birch. 

Yes! They make me want me to sing
and whistle just after,
a laughing whistle 
as if the splendor of ambiguities
could cause one to fall in love.

VI

Veins of rain scrolled down the window,
musical staffs playing a slow sad tune
so softly it could not be heard,
only felt.

Oh, I remember! It was there
that my shadow pursued me
for some unfathomable purpose.

VII

You’re considering flying away, aren’t you?
I can tell by the look on your face.
You’re imagining enormous silver birds,
stout and agitated,
on whose backs you will land
as if that could stop them 
from ominously walking
around and around and around
the legs of the villagers.

You won’t ask for my opinion, will you?

I’ll give it to you anyway.
Go. Go on.
But please…please return.

VIII

I have known the arthritic hands of the clock,
the brackish accent some refer to as ticking,
regardless of that description’s unreliability.

He will return on time.
I know it.
I will be waiting on the branch,
that one, the one as meager 
as the hands of a clock.
My talons are covered by 
so much qali
they highlight the dusk
bringing it ominously
close to our tree.

IX

Even as you fly through the imperial night,
the moon a snifter,
the congested roost miles behind,

hunters continue to look up noticing you, dejected, 
as you vanish into the black sky,
the final piece of night’s enigma.

X

At the vision of you landing on the thin branch,
even Her Majesty the Queen,
the Leading Light,
with her abrasive voice,
says softly, “The blackbird has returned,
just as he said he would.”

You smiled at me lovingly and said, See?
We sipped from the chalice of euphony.
The exalted luminary drove her Pininfarina Battista
in slow circles around our tree.

XI

I could not take my eyes from you.
You spoke-
We must fly for a short time,
collecting shards of glass 
as tokens of our loyalty to each other,
and to our sovereign.

And so, the blackbirds, flew.

XII

It began to snow again.
The blackbirds returned to their paltry branch,
their beaks filled with fragments of glass.

XIII

The snow did not let up,
as the blackbirds had thought it might.
Evening remained for three days.
Snow covered the trees
as the blackbirds perched
on their wretched branch
and counted their treasure of glass.