Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday

With Sabrina at the Audubon Sanctuary

In October reeds, Sabrina would plait
bright straws; she turns daffodils
into palm ribbons so they grow back,
and no talk of baskets or cases, good
cause, right? It’s not a garden but why
not garden? In night park thirty
years after reading Ironweed
in decades of class and cosmos
some pissed couple steamed by us
with new androidal red fury pupils
on the street, hard, hungry, doped
edge of need and use, heading
to meet someone for something,
the bad breath of hell, resentful,
and screwed, proud to be trying
as we put a lot of stock in pride.

The reason is unreason is reason
enough. Nobody lives in Thinking,
mindful, not really, mind-fields, yes.
And in the marsh, we are not talking
about pets, nor fish, birds (aggressive),
frogs (heard), turtle (splash), weasel
(swish), imagoes (moth), maybe
other things dipping sun paw
and whisker, and boardwalk
because people are such nebs
and too serious about comics,
planked loops, then white pines
with emu or ostrich scaley roots
down, some needles yellow white
and other needles reddish, closer
to green, closer to their falling,
close enough, or far away enough
and judgment depends
on how you feel about red squirrels
which are faster, more pointed,
than grey squirrels, faster ones
starting off more taxidermied
than the others, less to chew on.

Plait a few for safety’s pleasure
and stand in this circle of sun
after travelling chiaroscuro
and our sliding footfall
and the posted notices. The ferns
closer to the water still greenish,
but five feet away are golden fans,
losing their hold. The duck necks
on the water keep turning
from blue to green, Oz horses,
in circles and dim tangents.
The whole point of Oz
has horse necks, in Technicolor.
“Oz.” That’s what Vonnegut said
as he went in the locker. “Oz.” That way.
These days, along the Gulf of Phonemes,
more low-sodium Roy sauce on that.
PROVERBIAL: the person we disliked,
so much, sulfurous smell, liar, looked
like a reddish tropic bird so dank in musk

Teddy Roosevelt said, “Don’t stuff that ugly
ass-bird,” not wide-hinged, but efficiently awful.

David Blair is the author of five books of poetry and a collection of essays. His latest book True Figures: Selected Shorter Poems and Prose Poems, 1998-2021 is available from MadHat Press. He teaches poetry in the MFA Writing Program at the University of New Hampshire.

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx