Relic I
you are countless birds leering over
countless winds;
in my sleep your neck a
range of heads in tireless rank and beak in
pirouette the sky offers nothing
vision in ink night
this stream’s
connection to a bay older than
a strait distilling—
something important I’d forgotten
about replication
so send the birds off a two by two
frame rising
pulled into sleep better by the lapping
even when the sea is black, and fallen
Relic II
have not wondered when piercing is
not an option in reeds like battlement
hey bird it’s this—a thing
windward looks excitement but
confinement in openness is what’s
itinerant so pressed myself waveside
like all the whiteness would capture
it in the crest of the bay the
clouds kissing in
the balance of the bay a sea floor
of dead krill
you laid
markings a wave toward sediment
the dream of flight for a marsh village
From the Author: The couplets grew out of a card deck I bought years ago in Brooklyn. The grief, the violence, the strange grace struck me and set the tone and form of the poems. I revised the poems last year, which seemed right during the depths of pandemic living.
Catherine Cafferty is a New Yorker living in Denver, CO. She works in education and has written some poems.