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Two Poems photo

January 26, 2022

Two Poems

Lauren Turner

We The Roost

We rise, our nest dappled with first light
     spool into the day wings tendriled mid-air
moneying as we must but never as we might
     have monied had we less fruit to produce,
had we less eggs to hatch, had we more fear
     of flight. When we go out, we meet in a mass
of multifocal murmuration mid-sky, in time
     for rush hour traffic to tune into our togethering
transcendent by turns and then scattering, random,
     like ashes, like sun through a crack in the covering.
We peck at our pick of the leftovers, a constellation
     of coin-collecting — enough. Then, we set the table
for our true feast: each feather shed over the day woven
     into a quilt for the night — roosting into so much nothing.

Bionocular

The cat hunches on the sill pensively
     as if rain has become a spectator sport.
These days, you gotta pay good money
     for a seat this close. Price tags drape
from boughs of native plants at the nursery
     like handmade ornaments on the family
Christmas tree. Who’s adorning who.
     Who’s adoring who? The weeds tilt
their heads back in utter awe, say ahhhh,
     catch drops on their mother tongues,
catch wind of where to ride the rain next,
     their highway of invasion undulating
beneath my palliative perennial perspective.
     It’s dangerous out there, and I’m feeling
protective, but it’s too wet for weeding.
     So I pull up a chair next to the cat,
where we can both keep an eye
     on this winnowing world.