FOREST TOWN

(A garden cottage in Eberswalde, outside Berlin.

Walls papered with natural history charts.)

 

Holiday routes of Prussian dukes –

birches at attention like vertical blinds

swank in the early nineties. They fence imperfection.

 

Fig. 2. Die Kohlmeise: Das Männchen

versorgt seine Partnerin mit –

 

Overnight and flight. A towrope

between two low beds. Your tender-

headed convalescence. Your capital camo.

 

Some birdwatchers

mistake them for each other,

like spring onion and scallion.

 

Green in the scallion, pale

with loitering chill. The garden

unzips its jacket: pocket tit rigor-still.

 

Passerine refers to the 3 unwebbed toes, front,

and 1 straight back like a spur,

which enables them to

lunch

most acrobatically

from the undersides of leaves.

 

We dig trenches for vegetables

where once trenches were dug. Desiccated

poppies, maracas of arid bud.

 

Hier ist ein Photo von a dead Kohlmeise

that I found auf den garden swing.

 

Gashed by the ash branch, the child’s

soft armpit. Open flesh triangle,

a tent flap in wind.

 

Even still, he fans his wing.

 

Above the play train track,

a miniature air-arm

drops toy tin bombs.