One of My Own

I was going to post one of my poems here today.  But nothing's done, nothing seems finished or right; all I have are beginnings of things, scraps.  Things marked incomplete.  So?

This is the first blog in the new house.  It's a windy day; the bamboo wall that separates our yard from the neighbor's waves back and forth.  A flash of red: a pyrrhuloxia.  All kinds of birds flit between the--blades?  What's the right word?  Isn't bamboo just some kind of mutant grass?

Anyway, speaking of birds, here's an unfinished poem about seagulls I started four years ago, when I was still living in Northern Michigan.  It fits: I've been thinking of Michigan a lot lately.  And summer is fast approaching--I must plan my escape. 

Seagulls

A course language

caked with salt,

or cackles.  That's what

the seagulls speak. 

They spend their days

crouched on a shit-

caulked rock burping

up fish guts and Big Macs,

or circling, french-fry eyed.

They've developed

bread crumb radars. 

The one perched

on the light post ogles

my hands, antsy

for anything to drop.