After a Few Wet Months

A giant stream of redwings, grackles
they cross my winter field from woods
and seem to empty out into openness
spill like creeks to a sea
sweep through small gaps
and carbonate the sky.

Across across. They light. We light.
And after a few wet months the cold
is more acute. My walks around are
full of blow-down timber just prior
to breathing dreams of a later
green.

The world is too loud now
except in the coves, the grottos
the edges of reds, indigos,
deepest of blues
the cavernous thicket
covers me

while those birds
hang like leaves above me
then flash to-ground, rise like
black steam and scatter sun
across their boiling backs onto a house,
its white wall pocked by a million
thoughts in that single shadow.

L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in hundreds of journals (Rattle, Versal, The Reader, Worcester Review, Main Street Rag, others), including a recent nomination for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and he is the author of three full collections and ten chapbooks of poetry, including his latest collection, The Width of Here (Silver Bow, 2021). He is a reformed lawyer, he writes and plays music, and he teaches literature. Abel resides in rural Georgia.