West Nile

The birds began to rust,
brown dust, life sparking away.
Starting with one dropped note
like an autumn leaf.
I thought if I buried them,
then a flock might rise up,
come back Lazaren, Orphic,
a darker but deeper beauty.
With tunes to conjure the thinking
mind to ice cliffs eroding,
forests blackening,
little harbinger songs—
terrible angelic lurching
dirges that almost fumed
in choking carbon rage.
But nothing comes
so splendidly announced.
The messengers sit Cassandran
in their cells, listening as the first
ship plagues its soldiers onto shore.

Copyright © 2005 J. P. Dancing Bear All rights reserved
from The National Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission