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To a Crow

I am black, but Comely,
O ye daughters of Jerusalem.
—Song of Solomon

All morning you stand on the chimney
puffed like some boozy boy. Cawing,
sometimes clicking, you boast and swagger
over the slushy alleys and roofs.
Nobody's sweetheart, you turn towards
the river, the gray horizon, a braid
of smoke, and you shine like the forgotten star
on the night no one wants to remember.
Now you flap instead of glide, your heavy wings,
your awkward body with your shivering sound,
and you're no one, the blank space in the air,
some tree at the city's edge, and you sing
in your soft voice, the voice no one hears.

To a Heron

Your body of sticks and light and straw,
you are the season that turns, blue
like flat stones and dirty ice,
the leaves from my muddy childhood trees.
I see your arched wings, the curve of your neck,
and I want to go to the weedy bottoms,
where the brackish water widens,
then slows, and the iris breaks through
like wild stars. My shy one, my quiet one,
my skinny-legs bird, what I don't know of returning,
you are the quick fall into black night.
My ghost, my double, my troubling mind,
you trick the air with your patience,
trace the cool sweep, my stark time.

To a Mockingbird

So it's you, sitting on the aerial,
singing an aubade of car alarms and buses,
dogs in the alley, a scratchy record caught in a groove,
singing your love to a foggy city that says "do not disturb."
From your Sunday perch you sing a thin sliver
of river, trains whose winter whistle you echo
along with plane engines, New Year's pots and pans,
the minaret, bells calling the faithful to prayer.
My Russian bird who winds up with a key,
you sing in perfect pitch the songs of cats and sparrows,
of garbage cans and roof-top puddles.
You're an alarm clock without the snooze,
a truck hitting the brakes, a player piano left in the rain,
please, please go back to sleep.

To a Cormorant

So you've decided to guard the harbor,
dry your wings and pace the rocks,
watch boats leave and enter the narrows,
two long lines with sails down and motors on?
No one wants you here with your muddy feet.
You dirty the booms. See how they've hung
plastic owls, banging metal rods,
wires strung down and pointing up?
Not the fishermen with their lobsterpots,
the Sunday sailors, or the boys tipping the Anna Maria
with the weight of their bamboo rods.
Angel nobody asked for, oil can with wings,
you watch over the water like the devoted,
your quiet love, dark star.

JOELLE BIELE has been published in The Antioch Review, Hubbub, Indiana Review, The Iowa Review, Meridian, Nimrod, and Epoch.  Biele has taught American Literature and creative writing at the University of Oldenburg in Germany and has served as lecturer in the English department at the University of Maryland.  White Summer won the CRAB ORCHARD AWARD SERIES IN POETRY First Book Award (Southern Illinois University Press 2002).

The above selections are taken from White Summer.

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