Common Loon

A Poem

Words bumble like bugs

Around my ears, blurred

Voices roll off my

Shoulders, crestfallen.

Exhale a silver

Cloud and watch it part

To reveal myth stood

Still in black, damp grass.

Like a crane, razor

Sharp yet soft, beak outstretched

In the shadows, calm

In the uncanny

I step towards him

With false confidence

From the burn exchanged

For pricks of dread at dawn.

I swear he looked at

Me before he took

Flight, sailing like a

Ship into the blue night.

---

“Common Loon,” we searched 

For answers to tell 

Us what we saw, to

Make it make sense

“What else could it be?”

Not a statue in

The rain, not the wind

Whipping, whispers

Not words on page

Not a painting in

A gallery, gold

frames lining white walls

propping up pictures

of pale guts, grotesque

And real like phatoms, like

bowels that twist with each thought

Not projections. We

Search for it again,

Each walk in the park

Lit with white light 

exhaling polluted

Breaths, I feel alive

Yet small. I wonder,

Is that the give and take?

We search for something 

Fled, like we do, knowing 

We won’t find it. A  

Bigger part believes

We could. “Common Loon.”

Myth of time and penitence, remember?