Friday, May 20, 2022

COUNSEL

Possibly because a poet's 
always there
to witness,

invariably, this
mid-morning caucus
of grackles 

will swoop down 
from the humid sky 
in irridescent ripples,

then spread their 
long tails, puff their 
black bodies, 

and all at once begin
to castigate him
from the park lawn:

there's a song 
even more 
uncongenial than ours, 

which, for obvious 
reasons, you have 
long-since given up on;

but the pull 
to be complete is ever
too sweet to resist,

and so—
before you even 
notice,

you will
feel the need
to finish it.