Goose Hour

~ qbit

After Robert Lowell

It's sunset – steel and glass Manhattan towers
clutched in long-thorn rose bouquets, 
pilots waggle tour helicopters
like bees doing flower-find dances

Sniffing pollen-dollars off tourist cash ATM’s
and eyeing skyscraper penthouse stamens,  
a restless insect stutter seeks the city’s
crumbs of neon and noise –

Me, across the river, flotsam,
a shadow cast upon the shore,
I'm an old dog, no new tricks – nothing
up my sleeve, no sleeve in this heat

Salvadoran guy teaches new fish an old trick 
with rod and rubber worms,
Elton John's old/new remix bleats on repeat
Rocket man to the moon boom-or-bust box

The nasty old goose has learned a new trick –
snap-popped my new dog’s nose 
from safety behind iron railings,
beak, a prize-fighter’s jab and cover

The goose has fire and spark in her eyes,
trembles in defense of her young,
sweet feral dog wants to kill the goslings,
no cure for newest fight in oldest struggle

What do we take from this world
by force or guile, by grift, or flight, or fight?
The goose stands her ground, lances again
through the bars, will not scare.

For Shay’s Word Garden

17 thoughts on “Goose Hour”

  1. A landscape filled with survivors of every stripe and in every sense of the word both limited and unending. A slightly different style poem for you, qbit, but with all of your usual surprising phrasings and flourishes. Good, nourishing poetry for breakfast today!

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    1. Thanks. Yes, over time I’m trying to write in/adjacent to these other poets, like I did with Lorca. Not sure why I picked Lowell, what a gloomy bastard! Not sure what I learned that I would want to keep either, but was an interesting experiment.

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  2. I really like the helicopters behaving like bees. Very cool. And the brave goose mother who stands her ground. A very interesting read, qbit. Loved it.

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  3. I really don’t know Lowell, but I’ve been reading O’Hara’s Lunch Poems. This could be a late lunch with a side of mellow. By which I mean this works really well.

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    1. Thanks. I don’t really know Lowell either, and I can’t say I know him any better after writing this. He is tagged as being one of the most important poets of the latter 20th century, so I figured I should get on the program.

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  4. Love all of the images your poem invokes. My favorite lines are:

    “pilots waggle tour helicopters
    like bees doing flower-find dances” and I can so wonderfully picture it!

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  9. “The goose has fire and spark in her eyes,
    trembles in defense of her young,
    sweet feral dog wants to kill the goslings,
    no cure for newest fight in oldest struggle”

    I have always admired a strong goose. This is a wonderful, filling poem.

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