A Wallace Stevens poem

is a cemetry of words

Whereways

Early in the morning
as the male black
cat with white feet
and a female cat
belonging to him
hurry down
so does the hiker

A pair of strangers

If I could rise
as high as the lamp
post I could tell
what the bird with
white underbelly
and light sandstone
feathers was

If some go far
some go high
to elude you
In sight
out of reach

Trees at Work

My tea time companion at home
an ash throated flycatcher
its voice reverberating
in the calls of its brethren
at office parking lot.

A different bird call
sent me into a slow tap dance
as my feet followed
as projection of
the birds movement on
the branches onto the
horizontal axis

A Gila Woodpecker
to keep me company
until the end of
migration.

The Golden bough

A pomegranate tree
at the bottom
of Grand Canyon

A pumpkin patch

in November.

The could have been pies
and the jack-o-lantern eyes
the brittle that
it can still be

Merwins little children

With shards dispelled
on account of a fall

landing on a carpet
not missing to
ricochet off a chair

there lay a shark
with its jaws open

Upside down a tooth
or protome of an
elephant

As a vase
it had a nice rim.