David Beebe

Harbinger


This morning I should be elsewhere.
I’d prefer a walk through the Kiamichi Mountains,
listening to melancholic mourning doves
above the whisper of ancient pine wind.
I should be waist deep in the Mountain Fork River,
sending the line back and forth with fluid
exaltation as a litter of freshly spotted fawns
observe with great interest downstream.

Instead I stand in the driveway as blackbirds
form a circle, startled from their leafless tree,
passing overhead with the sound of a soft wavelet.
I pray these small, wordless moments are able
to fix me.

A friend tells me his life is now filled with joy
and I struggle to understand the word as if
straining to hear the remaining rustle of a
dead language, the last sunlight dust of the romantics.

David Beebe

Eventide


Wish death upon no one but your former self,
my mantra driving alone through eventide
golden hills, red-tailed hawks perched like
gothic angels atop skeletal Christmas trees.
Orange and red skies slowly convert to faded
pinks, purples, and blues. A voice tells me
it’ll get better, but this holds the same empty
weight as He will return.

The world is made up of many fires.
My mother prays and I write poems.
I tell her there’s no difference.

David Beebe

Greenhorn


Little sparrows tap on the glass of the door
before little bounces send each into damp grass
that feather their tummies as a robin tugs at earthworms,
their wriggling bodies evicted from the soil. These
tufted hieroglyphics chirp and hop and stop to
watch the door for movement. They must know
about the time I searched how to build a birdhouse
on the internet or about the feeders I eyed at the
farming goods store. They must also know
I’m sincere when I whistle along to their individual
songs that carry high in the elm and cypress, just
as I know I’m not judged by my coworkers for fumbling
their native tongue – a fire kept in the blackened
pane of a brakeman’s lantern, or between two red
and orange palms, or held waist-high in the oxbow bend,
waiting to bite into tart tangelos under a full moon,
shadows stretched and dancing over land with no boundaries.