Ode to the Brown Pelican
I know I am not
your equal, but
when I hike along the cliff tops
and you glide past at eye level
I feel I almost could,
like you,
make everything look easy:
the ascending, the stroking, the wafting.
You aren’t pretty
or songful, and yet,
around your extrovert’s beak –
hints
of a satisfied smile,
as if you know
the shopping bag
you always carry with you
will soon fill.
You barely flap,
just a tilt east or west.
Your eye is not a bird’s
obsidian bead
that bounces off me
like a ball bearing,
but sky-blue and fetching,
an eye that could meet mine
across a pillow or a café table
if we ever came nose to nose,
which is unlikely.
It is an eye
that knows things
about how to follow,
though today I catch you
on your own swimming the air
with the equanimity of a leaf,
immune to high ambition
but alert to small,
quick opportunities.
True, on land
you’re comic, all lip,
ready to laugh at your own
awkward punch line.
But then those spread wings,
those wings, those wings
catch the drift.
—Originally published in Atlanta Review
Every Minute Drove It Wilder
Talons so meticulous they could pluck
a kestrel from the wind, or pierce
a vole’s skull, but useless
on our deck—the young hawk flung itself
head-first at the glass wall where
panic trapped it, and flailed
its foot-long wings. Every minute drove it wilder.
I watched you wrap a tee-shirt
around your hands, step out
and sweep the bird up in its frenzy –
holding it away from your chest
and face and eyes –
then raise your arms to toss it hallelujah high.
For just that beat, fully extended
against the sky, you looked taller
than you had in years. Your hands were hawk,
arms in a wilderness of feathers,
an exuberance of wings.
—Originally published in Southern Humanities Review
About the author Susan Cohen is the author of two poetry chapbooks and a full-length book of poems, Throat Singing (Cherry Grove Collections; 2012), as well as co-author of a non-fiction book on height. Her poems recently won the Anderbo Poetry Prize, Atlanta Review International Publication Award, Rita Dove Poetry Award, and Literal Latte Poetry Prize, among other honors. A journalist and former professor of journalism, she lives in Northern California, and earned an MFA from Pacific University’s low-residency program in June. These poems are from her second full-length manuscript, A Different Wakeful Animal.
The Outdoor Poet is edited by Robert Sward, author of numerous books of poetry including, most recently, New and Selected Poems: 1957-2011 (Red Hen Press). He lives on the Westside with his wife, the artist Gloria Alford, and a poodle mix named Cosette. Participation in The Outdoor Poet is by invitation.
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