It pleases me to share these. I finally collected them into a book I would have been in my mid-twenties, living with friends on the Longbeach Peninsula just north of The River up on the Shier Bros property overlooking Willapa Bay, one of the great bird stopovers on the west coast flyway. I read Leaves of Grass that winter, at night while the stove cooled and the geese flew over the roof...
Miniatures, winter ’77 or so
hands
split up a mess o’ cedar, build the fire,
tender up the sweet of the guitar,
touch the woman in truth, hold her face,
sleep like white calves in the sun
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magpie magpie
the meat of the moment clutched in your beak
magpie magpie
the bones of the moment passed
a trash of feathers
white and black
against melting snow
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these flutter cry wing curve
primary feather flex
crowded droppers on, democratic
heated beaked quarrelings
in the feathery floating carrion
these gulls