Summer Jazz Crow
Where houses sigh against the bay,
a crow expands his repertoire.
He fishes metal with his beak,
arpeggios of broken glass,
picks keys from shattered doors
to save them in his secret cache.
The bird may simply stare
at each bright jewel in his horde.
He might arrange them for a song,
or leave them as they were,
or pluck his favorite, four high notes
to blow against the blue.
From The Model 8 Polysomnograph:
O Superman
Superman is dead, his body
delivered in state aboard a plane.
But the dream confides a stunning truth--
he’s not actually gone.
Shift perspective to a middle-aged man with dark skin,
gripping a pole on a high-story garage as the plane
passes too close and clips the concrete.
The man
--or a bird, I’m not sure--
almost falls.
(I wonder what he was doing there, on the edge.)
After he regains his balance, he descends many stories, by stair,
to an ugly landscape--an access road between the garage
and a superhighway. But the dark man notices beauty in a patch
of green weeds. He also sees the body of Superman, dropped
from the chilly heights of the plane
during the collision.
Superman wears his red cape
but the S on his chest is ripped open.
He looks naked and pale.
He is a lodestone,
too heavy to move.
I am now the dark man, tending him.
The road changes.
Construction yields tall buildings
and a lean-to the transit authorities provide
for the superhero to protect him from
weather and falling rocks.
One day, something happens--
I don’t remember what.
Superman has to drag himself
across the road.
The grass there is greener.
The hill is higher.
For a moment, I am him,
Superman
delighted by this change
of earthly perspective.
***
M. Frost
