Lake Effect, Spring 2014, Volume 18: Aubade

Robert Gibb, "Aubade"

Something’s in the air, the blur of wings
About the feeder, something almost liminal

Fluttering in the upper panes of glass,
The tussocks of the ornamental grasses

Fountaining again this year.  Already
This morning the Seventh Day Adventists

Have gathered next door, marking time
Against the apocalypse, its floating deadline.

Why such yearning to be done with the earth?
The wing-bursts are almost peripheral

Before my window, or beneath the feeder
Where the ground has been picked bare.

I watch a small squall of sparrows,
A cardinal stropping his beak on a bough.

Turkeys in full-sail like Chinese junks.
Alone, you’d think it would be simpler,

Residing in what I see—the buff-colored,
Beauty-marked doves—but so much goes on

Beyond me.  Nor is plenitude a matter
Of numbers, the hubbub of passing things.

One squall at a time, I try to keep in mind.
One cardinal.