The Hawk West Desk Window 10:00pm
I believe I will live
to tell the story of My Death
& not the murky recitation
of past relatives
& misty shores
I will live to tell
of nightly dreams
coalescing
into daily performance
the history of which
enshrouded
by My Veil
of Truth
will come to My Listeners
as no surprise
The Hawk Deck 12:40pm
I have been called to write
by the high urgency
of The Willet
here in My Sanctuary
The Call of The Wild
alerts Me to The Strife
of Humanity
I know exists
but from which
I am graciously
exiled
JB’s Barrington Passage 2:11pm
I saw A Star Man
in My Beer
DNE (singularity)
on a license plate
& My Girlfriend gave Me
magic earrings
for the day I was born
here I am looking
to the foggy Causeway Beach
ready for the all-clear
The Hawk Living Room 7:30pm
I ate My Potato Salad
& drank a beer
here by the open Living Room Window
at the edge of The Tomato-coloured Couch
but that was at the edge of The Galaxy
where stars burst & die
I would lie My Head on a blanket
& listen to the aftershocks
wafting through
on the surge
of ocean mist
& bird call
The Hawk Queen Bed 2:22pm
In Bed in lavish purple
bedding & robe & calico cat
window open to the spring
I sit This Afternoon
with My Worn Out Husband
on the remnants
of a stomach bug, He & I
reading financial reports
off His Nexus Tablet
& planning how He can keep
working, rowing
& feeding the cats
The Hawk West Desk Window 8:30pm
There’s a man out of The Tub
Who doesn’t belong to Me
He’s My Husband in name only
& stands at My Side
to watch The Opalescent Sky
& The Sun go down
with Bands of Cloud
The Hawk Queen Bed 8:57pm
Yesterday on The Trail
in Barrington Bay
I heard The Willets
The Sound of Childhood
in Jordan Bay
My Grandfather wrote
about The Willet’s song
in Anchorage Northeast:
“My own ear has seldom caught “Willet”
in the famous and far-piercing call.
To me it is pilly-will-wee,
with the accent on the last syllable,
or pill-wee-wee, with the accent
on the second,
in either case repeated over and over
and virtually always in flight.
It is a high, hurrying, questioning cry,
urgent of something I can only imagine,
a glad sound on the bird’s coursings of the shore,
a call of fulfillment(sic)
and the June-morning glory
of being alive and a-wing.”
Howard Talbot Walden 2nd
Anchorage Northeast p.189
The Tomato-coloured Couch 3:33pm
What happened to That Long-haired Girl
Who painted That Giant Canvas
on The Roof of #5 World Trade Center?
I heard She turned 52
& writes in Her Journal
sitting on Her Tomato-coloured Couch
in Her astral-cork-floored living room
surrounded by beaches & dunes
waves & bird life
while Her Son starts a tree-planting job out West
& Her Daughter finishes correspondence courses
for Her Last Year
of High School
The Hawk Family Room 4:49pm
My Daughter Eliza handed Me
the tail end of a smoothie
strawberry froth
lining the bottom of a glass
I slurped the remnants of berry seeds
and minuscule bubbles
leaving a spherical star-scape
tilted toward the sun —
a pink piece
of The Universal Puzzle
The Hawk West Desk Window 7:36pm
I wore My Blue Nose Dress
red sleeveless top, blue skirt
with white linear arrows appliquéd
on front, pointing up
— or were they pointing down?
It was The Outfit I remember
of all My Childhood Ferry Crossings
driven from Valley Cottage, New York
by a sleep-deprived Mother
to Bar Harbour, Maine’s Blue Nose Port
— with a younger Brother I barely remember —
driven and ferried every summer to Nova Scotia
The Province I would stay in
all My Adult Life —
married twice
with the lives & death of My 2.4 Children —
to live in old houses
on an island
on the mainland in woods named Atlantic
in an historic town named Shelburne
in a doctor’s big white castle in Barrington Passage
& now a new house
— new island —
on the point farthest south:
The Hawk, Cape Sable Island
where My Second Husband sleeps
on low blood pressure
while maintaining His high pressure job
taking care of nearly half the population
this end of the county —
and what do I do?
I am a housewife —
The Laziest In The World
according to My Daughter
& I Write To Tell The World
Joanna Gilman Hyde 