APPROACHING NIGHT

Arising into night
the departing sun
tangos away with its cloud,
memories soon forgotten.

Other dancers take the stage,
now a romance, now
a war dance, feathers raised
in prayer to unseen gods.

Night will soon bring
its curtain across this stage,
the avian casts’ final bows taken
the theater will darken, awaiting
another performance,
a new script tomorrow,
but for this solitary moment
of frozen grace, it is we
who write the conversation,
our lines sung by actors who
know only nature’s
unrelenting song.

First Published in Half Hour to Kill, August 2022
https://halfhourtokill.com/home/approaching-night-by-louis-faber

TRY LOOKING

He loved walking around the small lake. He could make a circuit in just under 40 minutes. If. If he didn’t stop to marvel at or photograph some bird along the shore. The runners flashing by him gave him strange looks, likely because they didn’t see the beauty in this bird’s feathers, how the light played off that bird’s beak. He was a runner once, until his knees gave out. But he can’t remember much of the paths he ran, just moment after moment of what was on the ground in front of him.

HEAVEN KNOWS

His extended wings
momentarily block the sun
setting his feather tips ablaze.
His vermillion talons grasp
the waiting branch threatening
to break it from the tree
unless is bends to his will.
His curved beak arches
against an orange sky
holding tightly to
the retreating sun.
I can only watch
a majestic moment
and believe that somewhere
the must be a God
for nature alone could not
conceive of a creature
of such beauty, such passion.

THE WEIGHT

We are obligated to carry
memories, and as we
get older the burden grows
ever heavier, we bend
under its weight, knowing
we dare not lose even one
for once castoff, the weight
is carried off like the smallest
feather on a storming wind.
Soon enough it is we
who will become the burden
that others must carry
and we hope they will
willingly shoulder the load
lest we become the excised
dust of forgotten stone
grown over with weeds.

LIKE DUST

We are obligated to carry
memories, and as we
get older, the burden grows
ever heavier, we bend
under its weight, knowing
we dare not lose even one
for once cast off, the weight
is carried off like the smallest
feather on a storming wind.
Soon enough it is we who
Will become the burden
that others must carry
and we hope they will
willingly shoulder the load
lest we become the excised
dust of a forgotten stone
grown over with weeds.

THE MESSENGER TIRES

He says, in a quiet aside he hopes
no one will overhear, that he
has grown tired of being an angel.
And not for the reason we might think,
he adds with a wry smile.
The work is not all that difficult,
in fact there seems to be less of it
week by week, but he has grown patient.
The real problem is sleeping,
there’s too much time for it now,
but have you ever tried sleeping
with a set of wings on your back,
talk about shoulder pain, and don’t
think of rolling over, that
is always a bumpy ride to the floor.
I tried being birdlike, of course,
but even the saints had to laugh
as I kept falling out of the trees.