Spotted Pheasant Sea

 

 

In the morning

While you sleep,

I watch out over spotted pheasant sea,

and my image stares back at me

from a thousand temporary waves.

 

And each moment of this place,

each moment of  my life,

flies out over spotted pheasant sea

like long hopeful radio waves

flung out into space. 

 

Each vanishing wave mirrors and

embraces each moment

mirrors and embraces each wave

Like new lovers.

who kiss and clutch all night

until their lips chap

and their pubes bruise.

 

Æ

 

Under the bushes,

stashed in the snow and weeds,

the pheasants slept last night in the cold. 

Frost covers their graffiti-spotted steel flanks,

while their burnt-out eyes point starless in the night.

 

 

the pheasant operators come to work

riding legions of snowmobiles. 

You hear the rowdies

roaring out over the dunes

five to ten minutes before they arrive. 

 

They dismount bowlegged,

walk behind thick clouds of breath,

green jackets hanging open,

bright yellow fiberglass hats

gray gun-metal lunch boxes.

 

They crawl up into the long frozen pheasant necks

and stroke the birds to life. 

Lighting the eyes,

Lifting the heads. 

They come up--

one, two,

then a dozen. 

 

Finally a full twenty or more

bob and blink

as the bodies begin to move.

 

They thaw, claw,

and clatter

in the beak-cracking cold. 

Mining the shore for food,

drilling the banks with tiny laser eyes

darting like sparrow lights at the feeder.

Æ

As I watch out

over spotted pheasant sea,

I understand how our lives twine

untwine, and re-twine

in tunnels of instance

out over the waves below

I watch us kicked from our nest

by the hunter's heavy boot,

gunned from the sky

turning already to fight.

I watch us betray, crumble, heal, forgive, and reunite.

And in it all i am stunned

by the ferocity

with which we seem to want

this thing.