By David Stallings © 2008
I click the latest international news
documenting my daughter’s public recovery
from Internet obsession—
il Repubblica, NYT, Today Show:
“52 Nights Unplugged!”
“A Secular Sabbath!”
Blogs aflame, the Zeitgeist twitters, senses
an addictive flaw—
and need for new web sites
to explore the malady.
Outside my window
a varied thrush, dressed
for upland migration,
beckons. I step onto the porch,
hear a spotted towhee as it shuffles […]
By David Stallings © 2007
The Swainson’s thrush
and western tanager have quietly
departed. Only the winter
wren occasionally lights
the somber forest.
If mild weather continues
into the fall, good fortune. But soon
the decline will be more noticeable,
leaving nothing but aching grayness
and cold rain.
It will be
time to lie
down.
(No. 99 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)
By David Stallings © 2006
Aransas National Wildlife Refuge
Texas Gulf Coast, 1989
Look! There!
Fresh from the cover
of Birds of North America,
its bouncy flight
paints shrub tops
red, green, yellow, blue—
leads you
along the grassy
path, binoculars
drawn, eye on bird.
I glance down,
see the diamondback
fly past
your bare ankle.
By David Stallings © 2006
First a twitter
from out by the breakers.
Fresh from clouds,
a south-surging mass
traces tiny glyphs
in the wet sand.
Flap your
elbows,
flutter your
fingers.
They’ll
let you
join them–
one proud
peep
among a zillion.
Copalis Beach, Washington
By David Stallings © 2005
After arguing,
flat, cabin-bound,
we grump the Murden Cove
trail. No homes back then,
just second growth and silence–
now whooshed by raucous wing beats
and bold laughter. Craning
our necks, we spy a flash of red,
black, white, then scandalous
full view.
We laugh and pileate
all the way
home.
(No. 64 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)
By David Stallings © 2004
Coming out of upper Cameron Basin,
then along Lillian Ridge where
mountain wizards craft energy candies
in rock grottoes under
full moons.
Beyond attention, effortless airy
shadow inspects rock slides,
stubby grasses, dried
bluebells and asters.
Marmot monks,
stationed like signal fires,
rip the silence, lump
toward burrow holes.
Raptor vision,
swift shadow,
echoing whistles bring an urgent
scale to the land.
Forget pain in knees,
long day, heavy pack.
Breathe the distances,
find a […]
By David Stallings © 2004
Two circles pause
on an island.
It’s well and good
to draw the circle of our love
around us. But within it,
how do we keep our selves
spinning true?
The circles ponder
a long while.
Finally, one answers,
There’s no getting around it.
Just as birds learn
to make great sky-circles,
we’ll fall, and in falling, grow
wings.
(Epithalamium, August 7, 2004)
By David Stallings © 2004
Red-winged blackbird strides across turf,
crimson escutcheons flared. Conk-a-reee!
But here comes a rival,
a bandit at twelve o’clock!
Scritch!
Knocked to his side,
he’s back up, ready
for hot feathered
battle and
love.
Once my ex-wife told me,
You’ll follow your cock anywhere.
Despite my decades of loyalty,
she was, in a way,
right.
Conk-a-reee!
(No. 52 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)
By David Stallings © 2004
Once my mother’s husband
made me cut off the head
of a chicken.
This was another effort
to make me into something
we each sensed I was not,
a man.
I clutched the chicken
by its horny feet,
extending its neck
over wood block.
Two hatchet blows necessary
to sever head strings and bones.
Then one leg sprang free
and the chicken twirled ‘round,
a wing flapping phantasm,
spraying blood and […]
By David Stallings © 2004
Mindful of the tide,
thoughtful of the dark,
daily schedule patterned,
I avoid accidents
and ecstasy.
Still, I dream,
and know the chaos
of not
knowing.
The sparrow
may sing
at any
moment.
(No. 6 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)
