FORESTS, TREES AND PURPLE COWS:
AN EMILY DICKINSON CONVERSION OF THE MIND
by Wendy Barker
Page 10
LEDA AND THE BIRDS: ANNUNCIATION
Batter my heart, three-personed God...
- John Donne1. The Doves
The day the doves began to roost on her roof.
Their curdled calls, a sound of something boiling.
Odd, the fog that morning crept so cool around the windows,
that by noon cleared for only a couple of hours, returning
mid-afternoon to blanket the house
so the murmuring of the doves seem louder, louder.She refilled the feeder that hung
outside the kitchen window. The rush
of the tiny kernels of millet into the long tube.
The rush of the small wings as finches, chickadees
landed on the small metal rods, curled their claws
around the perches, and dipped, dipped.
When the doves flew down, the smaller birds, frightened,
flew away.Neighbors fussed about the doves, too many,
they tore the roofs. The couple next door trapped them.
Evenings she would creep outside, let the birds loose.
Would come back into the lighted house, finish
the dishes, place them, dripping, into the white drainer
as night came on, as the doves fluttered into place
under her eaves, settled on her roof, quiet
now, so all she could hear as she slept were the fog horns
calling from the wet black bay, the fog horns,
their low, incessant calling.2. The Owl
In Max Ernst's painting, she is struggling to get out from
under the feathery heaviness of a red cape, thousands of
red feathers gathered, drifting down from her frail shoulder
like ripples of wind on a dark lake, like the waves
that gripped her loins in the seizures of desire.Why do her pale breasts push away from such splendour?
Her nipples are tiny points of hardening flesh, refusing
to be flattened under the yoke of this mantle.
Her face cannot get free. It has been taken
over by the head of the strange bird. She cannot
get away from the close-set yellow eyes, the way
they stare into the tunnels of her pale body,
her emptiness, all that she does not know.3. The Swan
It wasn't sudden. She'd been going
down to the pond most evenings, when
the pink flush rose over the water.
The pond had been spilling over its edges, grasses so wet
she was muddy to the thigh now when she walked here.
She didn't know why she kept coming, evenings, as
the light changed.The night he glided to her she wasn't frightened.
Even with the fierce black marks over his eyes.
He was magnificent. Huge. Whiteness
at first barely brushing her legs, and then
every one of his long feathers touched her. Her breasts rose,
her nipples. She could not help herself
from opening to him, from easing his length into her
moistness, opening, opening, as he filled her, as he went on
and on filling her, his neck uncurling
its length across her belly, her back arced to its peak.Waking, she found herself
slipping silently under the floating
velvet pads of lilies, found she was
skimming ripples, waves. When
the pond opened its center, she dove down,
down, and lifted then, lifted dripping wet a thousand
white feathers spraying against the night sky, cascading
white stars that pierced the fog, clearing, clear
notes drumming the moon, calling,
calling what she knew now, what she knew.
