Kingfisher

He appears, with his stout build,

more cartoon than royal, his crown

like mussed hair, above a white

Cromwellian collar as he eyes the rip tide.

A sudden spangled splash

then he returns to the bridge rail,

silverside aquiver in his beak.

His being commits him to

a continuum of masterstrokes.

If Only Nature

Green to the very door! (as William W. wrote) has been my ambition.

If only nature would mind.

This explains my vehemence against the copulating beetles on the roses

performing all functions at once,

the voles who chewed the roots of the viburnums (fifty dollars each)

killing them in their winter sleep,

the grackles aswarm at the feeder while the smaller birds take to the trees,

the squirrels who gnawed through the shed's door to homestead there

(Snakes are merely problematic),

the mediocre poet whose self-promotion has been rewarded.

Freud boils it down to money and sex. Maybe it's ownership.

All transactions come with expectations:

the fragrant blooms from shrubbery, the morning calls for more bird seed.

I want the fox, the turtle, the owl,

but not the snail hiding its slime inside a yellow helix

as it poisons the monkshood.

To taste the fruit of my labors I protect it from slugs and thieves,

but, in truth, I envy them their disregard and greed.

March

The starlings are.....what?.....copulating's

a word that lasts longer than the act,

even including the wing fidget and beak rub,

like knives on a whetstone. Egging is

a word more apt, goes directly to the

consequence of the quick hop. Bomb's

another word that will not suffice, though

Spring is good, spring of the leaf, spring

of the year; In the Spring of 1691, the shepherds

were surprised by glad tidings;

and bosk, as in every bosk and dingle; bower,

too, lady's bower, black bower, bower

of earthly bliss, but bomb, even bombe

del fuego, ball of wilde fire, needs more

syllables with a ululation in the middle.

It should leave the speaker breathless,

sear the tongue.

Rebecca Okrent has published in Barrow Street, Marlboro Review, Margie and Western Humanities Review as well as other journals. She is completing a manuscript titled Boys of My Youth.