"Remembering the Birds," "Giving His Body to Science," and "Now Florida"

Remembering the Birds

for Rachel Carson

I remember birdsong,
the awakening of a summer’s day
when trees came alive
with gossip and wings.

Yellow finches darted from elm to elm
like shooting stars. And in the evening,
sparrows gathered on the pavement,
whole flocks seeking seeds and chattering.
We thought they were a nuisance.

In spring, the robins dove from nests
above the lintel, little warplanes
maneuvering between the hidden blue eggs
and our ducking heads.

We thought starlings’ iridescence ugly.
We’d clap our hands to disperse
their dark cloud that hung in the maple
like a cackling plague.

Now they are all the stuff of legend,
bedtime stories for grandchildren
who will never know the song
of a red-wing blackbird sitting on a fence,
or the cardinal’s call to his beloved
on the opposite roof, waiting.

Giving His Body to Science

Today he left the funeral of a friend early,
            to avoid further prayers
                        by the monotone minister

to beat the traffic home
            on the expressway
                                                                                             We resume our little lives
                                                                                             in the kitchen we talk over lunch

He says he wants no ceremony
            when the time comes    no memorial.
                                                                                             My father wanted no service
                                                                                             You gave the eulogy for your mother

            instead, he says,
give my body to science.                                                         My parents’ ashes are in a river.
                                                                                             Your family has no headstones.

Have you filled out the forms?
                                                                                             We emerge as from the cinema,
                                                                                             blinking

            entrails raked
                        by laughing medical students
                                    like mulch in the garden of death
                                                                                             A murder of crows
                                                                                             rustles in the hedge

            the blob of liver
                        blooming blue-black
                                     like a swollen tulip,
                                                                                             The trees answer
                                                                                             with pink blossoms
                                                                                             I will wear black

            intestines like sweet potato vines,
                        curling down to the unnamable

            bowels, and eyes like the glossy marbles
                        he played with as a child in England.

                                                                                             Leaves retreat red and gold
                                                                                             to earth before the snow            

hairless chest sliced
            with the appropriate cleaver

            branched arteries
                        a gleaming map of inner streets
                                                                                             Each day is a gift
                                                                                             I will give this one back

and the heart a rhythmed love
            a hidden valentine
                                                                                             An ocean swells deep blue
                                                                                             swallows New York

And what will they do                                                              I will take pills to sleep
                                                                                             I will wake to a vacant world

            with the hands no longer holding a book,
                        the fingers no longer jotting sudokus,
                                                                                             The Zodiac turns above us
                                                                                             spinning crabs, twins, a lion

            the arms empty of embrace,
                        a brain like mounded cabbage?
                                                                                             I will clean out the basement,
                                                                                             move to a rental, not knowing where

Now Florida

As a child, I knew
that my Jersey neighbors
would eventually flock to Jewish enclaves
for elderly widows who loved
the heat and the beach
in their sunhats and bling,
still able to read best-sellers
under large umbrellas in the sand,
still with an eye for a gentleman
playing golf in a neighboring resort.

Later in life, I read Zora.
It’s not all warm seas and margaritas.
A string of husbands, a life always
moving between sweat, love,
and danger, ending in a storm
flooding the Everglades.

Today Lake Okeechobee runs
the color of coffee, with algae
a toxic garden floating on top.
Even Miami is disappearing
as the world heats up.
A glacier melting in Alaska
sends a vanishing shoreline
to Florida, and on the way,
lights wildfires in California.

And so we burn, we drown,
we wave goodbye, eyes fixed
on stars and alligators,
on the last page of Hemingway,
on a swamp that teems
with life and death. Dear Florida,
I never loved you anyway.