The Hawk Deck 10:12am
How can One Sound
conjure up A Place
and A Time?
— It’s The Call Of The Jay
that does It for Me
That Authoritative Squawk
harkens back to My Childhood
growing up in The Woods
of Rockland County
where I was a bossy child neighbour
and control freak
to My Brother
The Tomato-coloured Couch 1:00pm
There Was No Little Yellow Bird
In The Scraggly Apple
When I Said My Prayer
Today
But The Waves Were There
The Waves Heard Me
And So My Prayer
Is Answered
The Hawk Deck 10:06am
I Am Guarding My Ocean
I Am Watching For Birds
To Record Their Song
Accompanying Each Moment
Of Scenic Bliss
A Dog Barks, A Neighbour Calls
To Another
While I Sit
In My Red Deck Chair
Taking Stock
The Hawk Portico 4:08pm
How many dead souls
can be attached to one
Butterfly?
No one near to Me has died
recently
yet there before My Stoop
flitted One for the taking
like The Birds
Who go unadorned
with such heraldry
The Hawk Portico 6:40pm
The Jays Have The Propensity
To Call Me Away To My Childhood
Raised By A Single Mother
On Top Of A Hilly One Acre
In Woods Of Birdsong
& Blind Man’s Bluff
The Hawk Portico 3:00pm
The Signalling Call Of The Gull
Is To Alert Others
But That I Too Hear It
Must Mean, Momentarily,
That I Am In An Exchange
Of
Ear
And
Voice
The Hawk Portico 5:55pm
Another identifiable sound here
is the melodic fog horn
sounding now with no fog
in sight —
sounding every minute
at the 42nd second mark
of My Ladies Bulova Open Heart Watch
sounding, reverberating in the key of C or D
(according to Eliza)
for ten seconds at a stretch
but not drowning out the birds
The Hawk Portico 10:22pm
My Guess Is That Cats
Worry The Birds
At Nesting Time
Much Like Predatory Governments
The World Over
Disturb The Population
Of People Trying
To Make A Living
(And I Don’t Mean To Paint Cats Black)
Joanna Gilman Hyde 