Three Poems

Julie Chiapella

It’s something, isn’t it, the color burst flash,

summer’s nameplate, at garden’s edge?

Faces tilted, the mane of gold riots across

June’s lap, but only briefly lasts. I know

in every glory waits a dissolution. This

upturned freshness, flare to the possible,

this promise time does to us is also its knell.

Caress the fade. How brilliantly it bends back

into earth’s arms, the loamy purpose aching

to replicate love’s viciousness again and again.

Homing Pigeon

This way was used for years.

Centuries, you could say. It’s an innate

sense and there was capital in it. I don’t

mind. To get back where you belong takes

something unspeakable, and I don’t mean

the pantheon of cruel things I know

all too well: wings pulled off, throats slit,

necks twisted in a final act of the hungry.

No, unspeakable as in unnameable. Your

words won’t describe it. Won’t fathom—

how to fly somewhere never visited, never

heard from the bottoms of this funnel

ear. It can’t be delineated, the way home.

You should know that, but how can you

with all that’s been lost: songlines,

a million points of reference in landscape’s

frame built into muscle, bone, tissue, all that

makes a body. So imitate my walk, bob

the head up and down, up and down. It won’t

make a difference. My five spectral bands

will outstrip your three. The kaleidoscope

I see bywill map the way. So I look up. Work

out the path. Work out which way to go.

Murmuration

[Humans] can do what they will but cannot will what [they] will.

-Arthur Schoepenhauer

Mind the clouds, shifting

across winter’s sky

across mind’s eye.

You’ve seen it:

that great black

Muscle

of wings,

each apart

all

together.

Moving as one

No questions.

Which way?

When?

Unnecessary.

I’ll raise my arm.

I can will that.

The sum of cogito

shuts a window.

Let me be simple.

Let me lean

into fear.

Bred

of necessity,

something

calls me,

something outside

myself gathered

Between

will’s effort

and

what

I cannot know.