Following the Slideshow, I Let the Starling

go. The chickadee I pinned and framed.

            Cut away:

a bantam plane slips behind the spire.

Can you catch the shape note singing?

            A trace

and it should be a simple survey – a harness

to hold wine – yet every time the reel

            catches.

Ticonderoga, I’m offering you

a threepennyworth ransom for

            something.

For something, the detective was last

seen in a too-big blazer: then blizzard:

            pan shot.

We have established some seams,

that birds too bleed under claw.

            For blizzard,

we might have used puffball and pinch;

the eye entering a three-sided model or

            low-angle

and smeared with rotting fronds.

The inhabitant has stuffed plumes, pebbles:

            sequence:

in the seams of a too-big blazer. The plumes

are spattered. With wine. Focus, then

            crane out:

aerial, the voices drifting from the plane.

The fort demanded and given in no name.

In the Fall the Threshers Came

Being in damp

We became quarrelsome and cranky

            There were buffalo wallows

Not yet become part of our vocabulary

Air on screened balconies advanced

            So funny and wise

Olive showed me

The baby in the big china wash bowl

            She then climbed on the rack

I simply couldn’t speak

Air or foggy weather

            Never allow it to go crosswise

When we heard the sleigh

Started by a virus

            He reached out

To grab the lamp glass

We rode back to the granary on a load of grain

            Mother had a new side-saddle

Long heavy skirts really

Soaked up the water

            Always place the sheaf

Head first on the carrier

Miss Matheson tinkled a little bell

Most of us were constrained

To get him to stand alone

            How tall she had grown