Michael Mackin O'Mara
  • Poems
    • A Brief History in Pink
    • a poem (Ars Poetica)
    • the boy who could fly
    • the conflagration
    • Dissertation
    • Dreams in Black & White
    • For the Dear One
    • Goya, The Third of May
    • Interrogation Survival Techniques circa 1988
    • In the South Pacific
    • In Your Global Warming Dream
    • The Irish Goodbye
    • The Lost Canoe
    • Marisol
    • Night Prayers to Guadalupe
    • On These Nights
    • Poem at the End of the World
    • The Scrutinies
    • The Smallest Color
  • GRAPHIC ARTS
    • Declining Nudes
    • Lily Pads on Acid
    • Polar Series
    • Torso Studies
    • Who Do You Love
  • PHOTOGRAPHY
    • Outback
    • Skins
    • Splintered
    • Walk About Colors
  • Contact

                           The Scrutinies
Originally 
published
by
Paper
Nautilus
​
“they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns…”
​

the robins are migrating chirr-up, chirr-up
they perch   they hop   they flock frantic   they are tittering red breast legion
 
                       the narrator explains subtropical insectual abundance, theories of third geologic era Mesozoic roots
                       he describes the great migrations, winter and breeding ranges, mating for and not for life
                       multiple blue or mottled eggs
 
 
in the trees outside my window, on the crisp lawn
till a kid on a bike scatters the roosts to shotgun flight
 
                      he mixes instinct, ritual, biomass and biomass consumed,
                      numbers populations, declines and resurgences, and, as with many small birds, 80% morbidity
 
in the trees outside my window, on the crisp lawn
I still hoped, as the old reverends implied, to walk out among them
priests who always sat too close: soap and scotch and sanctity
as they murmured
how like unto St. Francis I seemed
 
 
                      knees touching, 
                      and: Do you ever?
                      hands lingering,
                      and: Whom do you think of?
                      smile contorting,
                      and: What you do for me,         
                      you do for Him.
 
 
                      the narrator could use a moment
 
           
beyond reason,
Assisi sprouts to fate
seasons in a desolate meadow
 
whispering with flocks
of imaginary birds

@minwpb


  • Poems
    • A Brief History in Pink
    • a poem (Ars Poetica)
    • the boy who could fly
    • the conflagration
    • Dissertation
    • Dreams in Black & White
    • For the Dear One
    • Goya, The Third of May
    • Interrogation Survival Techniques circa 1988
    • In the South Pacific
    • In Your Global Warming Dream
    • The Irish Goodbye
    • The Lost Canoe
    • Marisol
    • Night Prayers to Guadalupe
    • On These Nights
    • Poem at the End of the World
    • The Scrutinies
    • The Smallest Color
  • GRAPHIC ARTS
    • Declining Nudes
    • Lily Pads on Acid
    • Polar Series
    • Torso Studies
    • Who Do You Love
  • PHOTOGRAPHY
    • Outback
    • Skins
    • Splintered
    • Walk About Colors
  • Contact