Poems by Donna J. Long

Consequences

by Donna J. Long

From Canary Spring 2020

Donna grew up a few miles from the world's most beautiful beaches on the Gulf Coast of Florida but rode horses in orange groves instead. She now lives surrounded by spruce and beech in north central West Virginia

Ruby-throated
hummingbirds are dying
on interstate highways, drawn in
migration to wildflowers

blooming across the median, along
the shoulder. Red-winged blackbird,
fairy wren, purple finch
all at risk—who could foresee
such consequence? What if

the heart that stops, the body
to be broken is almost invisible?
What counts as unforgivable?

Tomorrow and summer will swelter
like a snare, the slow slide of sweat a rhythm
broken only by occasional violence—
thunderstorm, lightning strike, the manic front

moving east. Down south, spring’s time passes
in the crease between hard freeze
and mosquito bite. On the river swallows fall
sharp-winged from the bridge, fling

across water into sky. Who knows
where home begins? If birds return
by such subtle maps as current and breeze,
sun and star, what maps memory?

If I knew no desire
beyond what the wind brings,
if memory were brief as a bird’s life,
there would be no words

I cannot say. The chickadee could crack
a black hull for the seed inside without
breaking the sunflower’s promise.

© Donna J. Long

Turkeys in the Meadow

by Donna J. Long

From Canary Fall 2020

Heads bald, beards limp, tails slung
low and formal as statesmen, they move
like politicians in grave cadence
across the hill, listening for crickets

kicked up in shorn grass. Demeanor
severe, the Orrin Hatch of the oversized
bird world, closer to dinosaur than dove
or hawk, Toms lumber along in doles,

skulls bobbing, pendulous snoods
reddening after hens or soothing
to blue at night after improbable
flight to roost in trees with posse,

gang, crop or raffle—monikers
that do not muster Franklin’s fondness
for turkey vanity (said Ben in a letter
to his daughter, the gobbler’s virtue

proved the eagle’s bad moral character).
Today, we name “turkey” the jerk, jackass,
and idiot in need of insult, but these
pedants of small prey, portly wattles asway,

fan out across our pasture like a search
party, iridescent of feather, a lustrous
enterprise, an expedition underway.