Same Old Jazz

On the first day of Spring I am wakened by blackbirds

Snapping their axles of sound on the garden wall.

Mr. Anthony M'Canicus arrives to assure me

That in the new season Wednesday will follow

Thursday.

Mackerel sky at sundown; lagniappe of cloud to

southward.

The equinoctial tides drag at my gumbo blood.

On the first day of Summer the Jays arouse me-

Their concept of blue grows on the wind like a flag

That has never fought a war. And Mr. M'Canicus

Has fixed it, he says, so that June follows August.

Morning moon, bone fragment; sky of machined

monel.

Noon, pure sulphur, clouds into form like a tree.

And Autumn coppers, like a Potlatch feast,

And Winter with its diamond anguish like a snow.

The birds go kittywampus through the sky-

Let Mr. M'Canicus unchain his sundial.

Stuffed, a pheasant will sustain a mantel,

Though the sparrow punctuates an old disorder.

Order/disorder. Noon or Spring

The birds are ticking to a different time.

The formal bull lost in the baroque

Meadows of green time finds that all flowers break.

M'Canicus is not my gardener. His order

Is worse than the disorder of those goddamned birds.