Classic Poem

I searched for a woodcock I'd heard
twittering in the bluegrey caverns
of evening — a sardonic bird
with the long droll proboscis
of the born belittler — in his case
so long it belittles himself.
About starling size
he is — with like wedge-shaped wings
and tail, so that he too flutters
a faint four-pointed star
overhead where he hovers and sings
down to his maybe-more-amused-
than-moved beloved in the grass.
Anyway, at concert's end
he descends in a teetering spiral
like a drunk coming down from a box
at the opera — and after a brief silence
utters a loud piercing razzberry,
five or six times.

But, passion or parody,
his twitter among the ragged last
white clouds blown eastward
and nightward is like an English lark's,
and you'd look up too, hearing it,
to try to make him out ... I did,
and picked up a small star all right —
so — for that demi-flash before
it registered as Vega early alight —
saw clearly a golden woodcock.
And then the very illusion's fading
made Vega seem to recede
singing into infinity. Oh,
he took me in, that parodist,
and lost me where no berries grow.











By permission of the author.