Poems by Peter Everwine

Another Spring

by Peter Everwine

From Canary Fall 2022

Peter lives in the Chowchilla/Fresno watershed.

In a corner under the eaves
of the porch, a nesting dove—
the same returning dove—tosses
a few dry weeds, willy-nilly,
into the prevailing wind, then waits
for them to fall in place.
Some do.
*

Because I mean her no harm
she allows me to draw close
to her precarious balcony.
I bid her good morning,
she cocks her head at me and blinks—
two old familiars who share
a moment of dappled light falling
on the peaceable kingdom
of the front porch.
*

This morning, a light drift
of feathers on the lawn
and the day’s expectations sour.
Each spring this dumb show of events
repeats itself: a nest abandoned, another
plundered by crow or jay, eggs
spilled from their thatch, an inch
of blue flesh, like a maimed thumb,
drying in the sun.

Does the dove, in its season,
despite its plaintive moan, learn nothing?
And I, in mine? I fetch the paper
from the lawn, people drive by
to another day of work.
Nothing is brought to completion.
Later I’ll sweep away the nest—empty,
again, of everything but a blind
belief in the possible.

© Peter Everwine

The Migration of the Turkey Buzzards

—The Central Valley, California

by Peter Everwine

From Canary Fall 2022

They arrive like a premonition—two
or three on the horizon, then by the dozens,
tilting in slow wheels on the updrafts,
soundless, their shadows sweeping the dry
slopes until dark falls and they settle
in the eucalyptus trees by the park.
Flight is the buzzard’s only beauty:
bird without song, bald pate and beak
tearing at a cow teats up in a ditch.
I know it belongs in the order of things.
I know about reading sermons in stones.
Some towns draw swallows; some, butterflies—
hard not to believe we get what we
deserve. What better roost for buzzards
than one of our dying farm towns—museums
of emptiness—going to weeds
and rust, the water too toxic to drink,
the hopeful heading off elsewhere.
This morning, dark shapes against the leaves,
they turn to the light and open their wings
like mantles, sunning themselves as if
at ease on the shore of an ancient sea.
Somewhere a radio is playing.
Dirge is one word for what’s in the wind,
though what the buzzards are listening to,
for all I know, is an ode to joy.