Ye White Antarctic Birds by Lisa Jarnot

Ye white antarctic birds of upper 57th street,
you gallery of white antarctic birds, you
street with white antarctic birds and
cabs and white antarctic birds you street,
ye and you the street and birds I walk upon
the galleries of streets and birds and longings,
you the birds antarctic of the conversations
and bank machines, you the atm of
longing, the longing for the atm machines,
you the lover of banks and me and birds
and others too and cabs, and you the cabs
and you the subtle longing birds and me,
and you the conversations yet antarctic, and
soup and teeming white antarctic birds and
you the books and phones and atms the bank
machines antarctic, and you the banks and
cabs, and him the one I love, and those who
love me not, and all antarctic longings, and
all the birds and cabs and also on the street
antarctic of this longing

---

This poem by Lisa Jarnot appears in the book Poetry 180 and I think it is fantastic. I love it so much I ordered a book of hers called Ring of Fire.

Jasmine or Jazz Man

After Javier Sologuren

Jasmine

                   white,

              just white,     

opening to a white space.

                    Javier Sologuren

---

Jazz Man

                     black,

                just black,

opening his saxophone case.

                      Cliff Hanks
                      (A spontaneous response to the Haiku above)

White Pelicans by Stephen J. Lyons

If yearning could be measured in wingspan
it would be this cluster of birds, draped
in cumulus white under a grey cover
of drizzle sky that could only be Montana

in June. And an impossible current
that masks the rich world beneath
this floating island of feathers.
What is it about these twenty birds

that brings the word vulnerability
to the lips? The way dim sunlight
filters orange through their thin bills
I trust entirely in crossing over.

Maybe I haven’t been awake
until this instant. Or spent enough
time alone in the cold, spring mud
in genuflection of flight.

Maybe today I’ll learn
what it means to be alive,
finally surrounded, in the middle
of everything all at once.

 

---

Stephen J. Lyons Twitter Feed
(at least I think it’s the same guy)