(1) Run-Over Dove
Even in death the bird’s blood’s red –
dry, true, less than ever much,
but gleaming over cobble, outspread,
up. Mapping forever one touch
of wind and wheel it seals head flat,
sticking to stone with single eye above,
holding to heart one stony splat
as ever a falcon held the hawker’s glove.
Flatted wings still wave white,
fray at the edge away from earth, fight
up. Eye stays a circle, posed
right for the warmer longer light of even,
poised split in its ever center, even
in death dark, even in death not closed.
(2) Dead Thrush 1
Strange my own opening killed the bird:
window I had made. No curtain, screen:
I was asleep. I never even heard
the head slug on the soundless unseen.
I woke to see him lying on the porch,
motionless and yet a center still,
heavy at the head end as a torch
all the winds had risen round to kill.
His body flattened as the earth is flat,
clinging to form although the fire was out.
If only the bringer of rest had been a cat,
part of the living, not the human bout –
the killer was no cat. It was my eye,
needing a glass to dream of flying by.
--Lloyd Haft (from Where Is the Body That Will Hold?, 1998)
