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Did Audubon
in the woods around Natchez
think of birds

as aspects of
his inner landscape

a mockingbird
in the marsh

the secretive
part of himself

the pileated woodpecker
his relentlessness

and what of
the thrush

whose song
bends the spectrum

filling the pine grove
of his heart?

Did December's long beams
touch something

that moved in him
unseen

which he could neither identify
nor tame

but knew
only as a shadow

at day's end when brandy
staves off dampness

that accompanies
the dark

a shadow
that moves still in his drawings

of flightless wings
stiff legs and talons

in stuffed owls looking down
from mantels

decoys on shelves
or paneled walls

did he imagine these too
had their place

fragments of unrealized
desire

known to him only
as shadows at day's end?

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Copyright © 2013 Paul Pines All rights reserved
from Divine Madness
Marsh Hawk Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission