National Poetry Month--Day zwolf--Brevette Poems--plus a Limerick--Ode to a Mockingbird

 

Here are my Brevette poems. If you want to know what those are, go here. Here are my poems:

mockingbirds

s i n g

freedom

Christ 

l i g h t s

pathways

ladybugs

f l a u n t

spots

I'm preparing this limerick in advance. I wrote it for Sunday but it just doesn't seem appropriate for that day for some reason: 

There once was a mockingbird young

At midnight this bird would give tongue

It's song was quite great

But it just sang so late

That I wanted that dadgum bird hung

©2021 by H. Linn Murphy

Actually I love mockingbirds and listening to them at night makes me happy. But this poem just slipped out. What can I say? I just have a warped sense of humor. I'd be much more inclined to want to hurl things a dove, because for many reasons they're completely stupid birds. Mockingbirds are smart. I've even heard one sound like a car alarm.

Bird Fashion Show

Just so you know, none of these birds match the paragraph.

I think I've always had a thing about the wee birdeens--watching them, making up stories about them, talking about them, reproducing their calls, feeding them, finding their eggs, teasing them, eating them. I just don't hang around with binoculars and a bird book and catalog them.

I even have several posts on here about birds. Eagles, hawks, chickadees, doves, mockingbirds, possibly peacocks, and the ones who hide dog food in our jeans on the clothesline (cactus wrens) figure in somewhere in past blog posts. I'm not sure what's so appealing about watching and listening to them other than that it's soothing, like watching tropical fish.

What? You don't carry your duck 

on your head?

This subject came to mind because I was out hanging clothes at 1am and there was a mockingbird, newly returned to the neighborhood, out there singing away. He reminded me of a drunken Irishman singing one of those endless drinking songs, each verse different. Some people hate them, because they don't have a filter. They'll sing in the middle of the night right outside your window and keep you awake for hours imitating car alarms and ambulance sirens among a zillion other things. I love them for their creativity.

I love hawks and eagles for their raptor sharpness and sleek grace. They kept me company while I ran in the park I used to run in. It was always fun to watch them go from hopping around on the ground, to that maiden flight from the trees when they launched all raggedly knocking branches off, to that singing glide up to the park lights to take their thrones.

Watching the chickadees who have inhabited our birdhouse for generations (sometimes three a year) reminds me of raising kids by how they squabble over what they think is theirs when it's been someone else's while they were away growing up. Those little things can get vicious!

There are the trailer trash birds like the doves who are so stupid they'll build their nests in palm trees among other places. The first decent wind knocks their nests right out of the downward-tilted fronds. We've nursed several baby doves back to life after they plunge to the ground. We have one right now who always builds her nest in our hanging planter and freaks out if we open our front door precipitously. The thing is, she's loyal. She won't budge from her eggs (unless they're smashed on the ground, that is) for anything. She just plants her feathery butt right there next to our door and gives us the evil eye if we dare go in or outside.

I love to tease the cactus wrens by reproducing their calls. And they tease me back by filling the jeans on the clothesline with dog food chunks. It took me a while to figure that one out. I kept blaming my husband's old roommates, who, strangely, still seemed to be following us around to various places of abode to play their tricks on us.

The Gambel quails are scurrying across the road pretty much every time they see a car go by. I think it's a prerequisite of being a quail. You must take your whole family in a heart-stopping sprint across the road every time you see a vehicle approaching, regardless of speed. Maybe it's how they weed out the slow kids.

Well. So it's the first day of spring, which means the birds are back in droves. The gem-like humming birds are dive bombing the aloe vera stalks. There are conferences of fluffed out birds congregating on every power or phone line. They sing in the daylight and the dead of night.

I'm thankful for birds. They cheer me, entertain me, and fill me with wonder. And now, I think I'll go put one of their children in my pancakes.

Monsoon Moon

At last the blistering misery of the summer heat is easing slightly.

Before the towering black air castles dump their waterfalls of lifesaving water, we still hibernate in our darkened caverns and pray for surcease. The heat bakes the ground so hard that anything planted wilts to dessicated brown sticks within hours. Animals won't even come out to eat. The air is leaden and breathing is chore-some.

Then the cloud castles crack, sending out their invisible cannonballs and the sky comes alive with a fury of sound and light. Within seconds the curtains of rain descend; slashing the shriveled leaves from their bushes; filling every divot and gully; sending up steam from the baking streets; sluicing down the dusty walls; making rivers of the roads and alleys. Trees and sometimes power poles topple and wires careen crazily across roads and lawns. Palm fronds go whipping past in a flurry of brown-tipped green flotsam.

We run out into the deluge and are instantly drenched and shivering, but it's a welcome chill. We roll up our pants and stomp through the puddles. Court and Bear, on a dare, lie down in the river of muddy water. Luckily there is a shower at the end of their scenario.

Suddenly little pebbles mean nothing to our thirsty feet as we wade down the new stream to the wash, looking for shiny pebbles and strange treasures. The chocolaty water sweeps down the wash and out into a desert delta, past the bike jumps and debris the bikers have left in their wakes. We send leaves and feathers down the streams, hoping to see them emerge downstream. The furthest traveler makes the 'owner' the winner. They jump around screaming and laughing crazily, secretly just trying to soak the others more completely.

The deluge lasts only a few minutes and then the gray sheets move away across the city to fill other washes and roads. Runnels of muddy water trickle down through the labyrinthine patches of prickly pear and mesquite and then, joining other runnels, rush in freshets into the main wash.

Now the air fills with the scent of creosote and sage and hot blacktop. The rivers become streams, then creeks, then tiny runnels, and then they are gone, sucked at last into the thirsty topsoil. The ants come scurrying out to begin once more their endless quest for a fully stocked larder. The doves and quail emerge.

And the toads come out. The air, now, is full of the deep notes of their mating calls. The desert and yards are alive with toady meet-n-greet sessions. Busier streets fill with squashed toad pizzas.

When the sun has set, the mockingbirds begin their random choirs. There is the occasional soft cooing of a dove. Once again the geckos come out near the porch lights to snack on moths. With the passing of the rain, with the exception of an errant breeze, the mercury toils up and up again until we have come full circle.