Daily Archives: May 19, 2013

Eagles At Your Service

Two bald eagles
fell out of the sky
onto the runway in Duluth
and wouldn’t stop fighting
even then, so tangled
were their talons…

someone took a picture,
someone put it in the paper, 
someone put it on the Web,
someone made a
Congressional joke, and another
an Executive joke, and another made it
a metaphor for the state of the Union,
and another used it to speak of 
the follies of masculinity…

The eagles were taken away
in a pickup truck. On the way
to rehab one, apparently uninjured,
lifted off and flew away while the other
stayed behind and will be healed
and will be released again,
and no one has made that
into anything other than a wonderment
at what it must have been like 
to see that eagle rising from the bed 
of a pickup ahead of you
in traffic on the interstate…

somehow,
were I to choose bend
an eagle’s condition
to my own purposes,
I think 
that moment
would far outshine
anything I might feel
about them crashing,
angry, to the tarmac. 

““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““`

— the eagles in question


Poem For Nico

Nico, it has been 
too long, I am out of
practice, I’ve been losing
your voice on the first VU album
to focus on Lou,
skipping your later work
all together,
listening to crude guitar
more than smooth,
praising flat declarations
more than lyric
observations.

Please, say that I 
will be forgiven this morning
as you sing of gambling
over strings and
fingerpicked guitar
and break me open,
rolling dice within me,
pouring into me
like a snow-grown stream
just before summer.