Flightless bird, American Mouth
Iron & Wine

I was a quick wet boy
Diving too deep for coins
All of your straight blind eyes
Wide on my plastic toys
And when the cops closed the fair
I cut my long baby hair
Stole me a dog-eared map
And called for you everywhere

Have I found you?
Flightless bird, jealous, weeping
Or lost you?
American mouth
Big bill looming

Now I’m a fat house cat
Cursing my sore blunt tongue
Watching the warm poison rats
Curl through the wide/white fence cracks
Kissing on magazine photos
Those fishing lures thrown in the cold and clean
Blood of Christ mountain stream

Have I found you?
Flightless bird, brown hair bleeding
Or lost you?
American mouth
Big bill, stuck going down

-0-

   What does a life-time of search brought me?  
   A life-time looking for the right details to fill in the numbers of a life should be.    The colors acquiring shape, the shapes building a whole different whole.

   "An American mouth..." an ample embrace and love, a smile as simple and true, without fears, without resentments, without doubts.  I've found more than I had baragained for.  I played my cards and played them right.

   A farm and a ticking house, scared sheep, lost guineas and dead ducks, letting the fire in the yards behind that old house dress us all the same in it's warmth, hearing the thunder land nearby unsure of how to come without frightening us, wanting our company, wanting our life.

   The friendly dogs with clumsyness and slobber, undressing memories on top of the table around a piece of peanut butter pie.  Walking the length of the porch at night, smoke from our hands filling our lungs with floatings words.

   Dreaming in the ticking house, sleeping on a lumpy couch woken up be kisses from tongues other than yours.

   A ticking house, a peanut butter pie, animals and a farm, an aritficial pond and dead ducks.

Resurrection Fern
Iron & Wine

In our days
We will live
Like our ghosts will live

Pitching glass at the cornfield crows
And folding clothes
Like stubborn boys across the road
We'll keep everything

Grandma's gun and the black bear claw
That took her dog
When sister always says, "Amen"
We won't hear anything

And ten car trains
We take that word
That fledgling bird
And the fallen house
Across the way
It'll keep everything

The babies' breath, our bravery wasted and our shame

And we'll undress beside the ashes of the fire
Both our tender bellies wound in baling wire
All the more a pair of underwater pearls
Than the oak tree and its resurrection fern

In our days
We will say
What our ghosts will say

We gave the world
What it saw fit
And what we get

Like stubborn boys
With big green eyes
We'll see everything

And the tender shade
Of the autumn leaves
And the buzzard's wing

And we'll undress beside the ashes of the fire
Our tender bellies are wound around in baling wire
All the more a pair of underwater pearls
Than the oak tree and its resurrection fern

-0-

God damn you , Sam Beam...

...and thank you.