What are these jackdaws saying? I don’t know.
I need translations for the parts I hear.
The conversations of this smallest crow
come through my window loud and klaxon clear
but are more Greek than English to my ear.
These jackdaws lodge most seasons in the tower
of the giant church and grace the sunset hour
with flying squads whose aerial antics bring
them my applause, but now when blossoms flower
they nest as couples, celebrating Spring.
The mountain stream runs from the rocks
that are its bed, that were its bed;
rappelling boulders, taking shocks,
to join rivers, flow by docks
forgetting what it’s fled.
The pebbles that the torrent shakes
tumble but hang back
content with being troubled wakes
the stream invites but never makes
disciples of. They sink. It slakes
its thirst for speed, and whirls in pools
the bird bathe in, the birds bathed in,
reflecting feathers like wet jewels
tarnished by a world of rules
smeared and muddied out of ken.
Swans nest near the broadening banks
the stream acquired, the stream acquires.
The stream marvels at the nesting ranks
of creatures sheltering on its flanks,
and wanderlust expires.
The stream remembers as mirage
the waterfalls, the waterfalls,
that were its birthright: bright collage
it traded in for arbitrage
and pulsing puts and calls
upon its force, once pristine stream
that dropped away, that dropped away
and falling, traded ice for steam
fleeing its primeval dream
until it lost its way.
The rock the river rolls away
that covered graves, that covers graves,
exposes emptiness today
and brings the river peace that way
among the waves, among the waves.
The flying ant ascends the title page.
I gently show it where the flyleaf is
and watch, in what’s near rapture, it engage
the letters there. I watch its white wings fizz
across bold letters black as its fierce face.
I wonder as it wanders on a word
can words abstract a share of pride of place
in soft sonatas I have almost heard
and then, on waking, dream I only dreamed?
The flying ant seeks purchase on the spine.
I lift the book and watch this small ant gleam
in this, its night of future auld lang syne.
Like books, the ant exists, is here right now.
Like ants, I fly. We don’t know why or how.
If I knew all the colours’ names
I would not know enough
to catalogue the tulip’s flames
in these fields lined with rough
wet grasses where the great swans feed
and grebes give grebe chicks rides
through waterways that squarely lead
to dikes that damp the tides.
For miles and miles the tulips grow
in every shade then some:
lavender, and furnace glow;
purest black, and plum.
Reds so hard they hurt your eyes,
greens as pale as smiles
exchanged by lawyers, blues like skies
and golds that gleam like piles
of museum treasures in the sun
that recalls tulips when they’re done.
Cat purred, ‘the log of minus one.’ ‘That’s undefined!’
the jackdaw yelled. He flew down, cawing foul.
He darted off before the cat’s claws fined
his rudeness. See the cat rear up and yowl
that the bird is absurd to think she speaks of math.
‘If I add that the log of zero is a limb
of Satan, then you are on a slippery path
of soggy rhythms leading to a swim
in waters dark as the proverbial Styx,’
the cat adds. See the jackdaw, unimpressed.
‘Next,’ he tells the cat, ‘you’ll claim to fix
the log of positive one at what’s professed
to be itself one, into some dumb allusion
you will make to mask your massive math confusion.
‘Let me spell it out in words,’ the jackdaw said.
‘F of X and F inverse of x are inverse functions
If and only if F inverse of F of x equals x
and F of F inverse of x equals x.’
‘Thank you,’ I answered and tried again
to sprinkle grains of salt upon his tale.
‘He will fly a monotonic logarithmic function,’
said the jackdaw on my left. The others laughed.
‘Before he takes off, better give him unction,’
said another. With a swooping flight she graphed
the dizzy fall she estimates I’ll fly
should I leave this roof where we are congregating.
At a signal that I miss, they swarm on high.
They look back to watch me follow. They’re still waiting.
It had been there an hour, or maybe two, or six, and no one had noticed. Not that the unicorn was invisible or lurking; no one saw it because everyone knew unicorns were extinct. Except one. This one. Jack.
Jack was getting very tired. He fancied a bag of oats or better a bucket of single malt. His coat was dusty but his horn glittered brightly. SUV’s drove by.
One of the SUV’s was tarted up with ever so many off-road gadgets that its owners enjoyed showing to their neighbours and might actually use someday. It zoomed along carrying three people in fair comfort: a father reading the maps, a mother driving, and – alone in a welter of gear in the back – Cynthia.
Cynthia, not knowing what she was looking for, looked out into the dark and saw Jack.
‘Mom, Dad, a unicorn!’ is what she did not cry out.
Cynthia was not born yesterday. For all she knew the unicorn might have been, so she did not want to startle it by calling out ‘Unicorn!’ What she did shout was, ‘The bridge is out!’
Mom slammed on the brakes. Dad explored the dash the way a mole would: eyes shut, hands and nose all over the tasteful plastic and wood trim.
The SUV shuddered and stopped with its brakes squealing with the sound a unicorn makes when it can’t help laughing.
Jack laughed; he could not help it. Dad looked at Mom. Mom looked in the mirror, at Cynthia.
‘Sorry,’ said Cynthia, ‘I was dreaming I still had braces.’
The other SUV’s kept to the tarmac, speeding up to pass Mom and Dad and Cynthia in their vehicle parked mostly off the road.
‘Afraid we’ll ask for help,’ Dad said.
Mom looked at the traffic. Cynthia looked as Jack. He was really there, ten metres from the rear bumper. In the grass. In the shadows.
Standing out, thought Cynthia, with that signal horn on his brow, and with those ruddy muddy eyes. ‘Can you hear me?’ she mouthed soundlessly.
‘Of course not,’ Jack answered, ‘but I lip read. Any single malt in there, then?’
There was, actually. Bottles and bottles of single malt, one open and mostly empty. Mom said traffic frightened her too much to attack it sober.
‘Why?’ lipped Cynthia.
‘Horsepower,’ answered Jack. He laughed, not unattractively, and the ayre leaked out of the SUV’s tyres.
‘I think we’ve got a flat,’ Dad said, quick as a whelk.
‘Yes,’ Mom answered, ‘and a house in Provence. We won’t get there tonight sitting here on our berm.’
‘I’ll fix it,’ Dad said, moving as if he were about to get a move on, up tools, and open the door.
Mom, as he had hoped, beat him to it. She cleared her open window to land noisily outside. She popped the spayre tyre from the back of the SUV, looked at each wheel and squealed, ‘They’re all flat!’
Earth Tourist 