Calling T. From the Cultural Wasteland

I’m here in the fields where the crows are many and large.
In the present I am inarticulate.
In the tall grass I can look up and feel adrift.

I’m a slow sinner,
sleepy and swarming with both brides and bridegrooms.

I’m akin to the one hyacinth in the bed, malformed and too few-petaled,
a crooked blue; think of an angel, both scalped and crowned,
its heartbeat spilling into the furred soil.

Some days, I am plum skin. So much holed up in a songless mouth.
I know my place. When you say waste, it’s like a sigh continuing.

My teachers: the kinglet’s scarlet sore, so open, like the tulip
that taught me one color; a swab of wind; the fetus, like many moments rivering.
So sure I failed them.

The mind tires, but the perfection of instinct is like the sparrow’s crown of white.
Alone in a field, digging out from the self,
no need to usher me to the light. I prefer the slack and aimless willows.

In this field of silence there is a world of coats unbuttoned,
tails blowing behind the crowds of knowing and of not knowing.

I wouldn’t care if the hummingbird, the plainer, shadowed one,
drilled its beak into my throat and left it there.

Copyright © 2006 Tara Bray All rights reserved
from The National Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission