“Serpent” is the first part of the second poem in I Have a Bird to Whistle (7 Palinodes), my new chapbook. I’ll post recordings of the second and third parts in the next few days.
The book is available here to U.S. residents for $7.50, shipping included.
Non-U.S. purchasers can order it directly from me by emailing aBirdtoWhistle@yahoo.com.
If Ahead I See
Gray skies filtered through light,
eyes adapting space,
the possibilities of the
horizon or a foot
lashing out in reflex,
what do I learn?
The house finch sings as if
all air will expire at song’s end.
Falling, I release this misplaced trust.
The path, muddied and crowded with fools.
* * *
“If Ahead I see” is included in my 2017 chapbook, From Every Moment a Second.
From where do these poems come?
The second poem in the chapbook, (serpent, door, eye), grew from a snake-eviction experience one Friday evening, and questions about perception. I marveled at the strength the snake’s body evinced as it wrapped itself around my wrist. What does it see, I wondered. How does it sense? What sequence of events has brought me to this place, now, standing in the grass with a snake in my hands, the sun hovering just over the horizon, cicadas thrumming all around?
And of course the poem rumbled around in my subconscious for months after the incident. What took me back to that time and place? Who can say? Perhaps a flash of light through the oak’s branches, rain dripping from the metal roof, or the fragrance of burning juniper. I never know, but it slid out, somehow, onto the page.
The book is available here to U.S. residents for $7.50, shipping included.
Non-U.S. purchasers can order it directly from me by emailing aBirdtoWhistle@yahoo.com.
The Echo is Neither Sound nor Hope
empty trees
a darkened
window
the void
between chairs
unchanged
as if you’d never spoken
* * *
This first appeared in April 2015.
“Glass” is the third part of the first poem in I Have a Bird to Whistle (7 Palinodes), my new chapbook.
The book is available here to U.S. residents for $7.50, shipping included.
Non-U.S. purchasers can order it directly from me by emailing aBirdtoWhistle@yahoo.com.
Window Open, Closed
We enter daylight in the shape
of praise, little words
billowing through wire mesh. Across
the highway a busboy questions time
and the concept of never, while
someone plucks leaves from the bay
tree and plans her day. Roger Bacon
longed to manipulate the inner essence
of inanimate objects, to harness their force,
and a lonely man swallows prescription drugs
deliberately, releasing their attributes over time.
My eyes redden from juniper pollen as the moon
spins invisibly above our roofs, tugging at the
clouds. I once traced in a building of music
the organ’s sound to the woman I longed
to attract. Now, the window prevents the passage
of solids, but waves penetrate. I spread my fingers
across the glass, but feel no vibrations. Distant
sirens announce a procession of cause and intent,
of carelessness and indecision. Somewhere a voice rises.
* * *
This originally appeared during Bonnie McClellan’s 2015 International Poetry Month celebration, and is included in The Circumference of Other, my offering in the Silver Birch Press chapbook collection, IDES, available on Amazon. A recording of the poem may be found on Bonnie’s site.
“Passway” is the second part of the first poem in I Have a Bird to Whistle (7 Palinodes), my new chapbook, followed by “Glass,” which I’ll post in the next day or two.
The book is available here to U.S. residents for $7.50, shipping included.
Non-U.S. purchasers can order it directly from me by emailing aBirdtoWhistle@yahoo.com.
Aubade (Inca Dove)
Such delicacy
evokes the evolution of hand
and wing, a growth
reflecting all we’ve come
to know. Two doves
sit on the fence, cold wind ruffling
their feathers. What brings them
to this place of no
shelter, of wind and rain
and clarity defied? Fingers
often remember what the mind
cannot. Silence
complicates our mornings.
This last appeared here in February 2018, and was originally published in The Balcones Review in 1987. Seems I was enthralled with birds back then, too…
This blurb would compel me to buy the book, if I didn’t already have it. Ha!
I had the great honor and privilege of previewing and writing the following blurb for the back cover of Robert Okaji’s newest chapbook, I Have a Bird to Whistle (Luminous Press):
In I Have a Bird to Whistle, Robert Okaji masterfully constructs a universe of incisively beautiful sensory observations, in which the poet lives at the crux—owns and revels in the “life energy” of the “liminal”—between “unshuttered” stimuli and the “concealed” truth of existence. Here, where every ray of light shed on an otherwise “transitory” moment celebrates the gift of consciousness, and every deviation from expectation substantiates the self-actualizing force of human will, the language of poetry—of colors, sounds, and symbols—circumscribes our very being, as it drives our search for meaning. As nuanced as they are bold and delectable, these poems are utterly human, and utterly divine!
– Stephanie L. Harper, author of This Being Done and The Death’s-Head’s…
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“Translation” opens I Have a Bird to Whistle (7 Palinodes), my new chapbook, followed by “Passway” and “Glass,” which I’ll post over the next few days.
The book is available here to U.S. residents for $7.50, shipping included.
Non-U.S. purchasers can order it directly from me by emailing aBirdtoWhistle@yahoo.com.
O at the Edges 