ALiKI BARNSTONE
The Irises of the Midwest.
In winter, sun is a crab burning
Through black tree lace as the strict god
Of country churches breathes in a headful
Of ice. Snowy restraint. Yet spring's
A stain of iris beds that can't
Be washed from the linens. Then sky
Shrinks into a malevolent
Blue eye as sinful petals bloom.
ALAN DIXON
A Small Black Cloud
As I open the curtains black clouds are parading
across the first daylight and a black gull is gliding.
It disappears in a wisp of assimilating
cloud. Surely it was a gull. I could not mistake it,
that easy flight so much a part of the winter sky,
but think when I must go what an easy way to die,
just lost in a dawn wind, no funeral expenses.
I'd like my lines to be left, but no other chances
beyond I was going to say "the grave." What "beyond"
has that? Who would not rather be sli pped in a smooth wind?
And who needed a witness to the loss of his life
but a vengeful ghost? That gull thought nothing of it, grief
was not what it required, but in my lines I notice
creatures don't die properly, avoid termination;
however tidy I'd like things to be, they mention
themselves, the dead, and sometimes it looks as if malice
keeps them going, flying like part of a winter wind,
or kindness, briefly condensing into a small cloud.
