Goose Feathers by Gary Every

The telephone rings late at night

and the beautiful woman I wish to be in love with

greets me with hello

making my heart go pitter patter.

Her words are punctuated by percussive raindrops

going pitter patter on the rooftop.

as she tells me excitedly she can hear a flock of geese

flying overhead.

The storm clouds are too thick

to allow the flock of migrating birds to be seen

but she holds the phone out the window

so I can hear them honking.

What is a flock of geese doing

in the middle of the desert?

What if the clouds part and reveal nothing,

but the honking continues

is there such a thing as geese ghosts?

The beautiful girl says good night

and wishes me pleasant dreams

as the rain slowly stops

and a gentle snow begins to fall

plummeting far too soft for either a pitter or a patter,

snow descending and covering the earth

in a magical blanket  

with giant flakes as big as goose feathers.

Gary Every, Arizona, USA

Merlin by Gary Every

The snow is piled deep in the narrow canyon.

            No footsteps precede mine

            and I enjoy the solitude as snowflakes fall.

            The wind races ahead

            carrying whispers of the chill frost.

            Suddenly a pine tree stirs

            white powder sliding off the green branches

            as a small blue raptor launches.

            This hunter flies low and swift,

            straight towards me

            and so close that he passes through

            my breath vapor clouds

            parting the fog like a misty shroud,

            slicing my breath with his wings. 

            For just a brief instant we stare eye to eye

            he fierce, proud, merciless, and curious;

            me amazed and surprised,

            too slow with my camera,

            and glad that I am not a mouse or rabbit,

            wondering if a bird named after a wizard

            ever goes hunting for souls.

Gary Every, Arizona, USA

The Cave of Shanidar by Gary Every

What else really matters

            except that someone loved him

            and loved him dearly

            enough to place flowers in his grave.

            The archeologist excavates;

            carefully scraping the remains

            of a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal

            into a sack

            to be weighed and analyzed.

            So much of prehistory has been lost;

            social structure, tribal government,

            and even though the shape of their skulls,

            length of their tongues

            and complexity of their relationships

            screams for a language

            not a single word has been retained.

            The archeologist tries to piece together the past,

            amazed that this tiny grave

            could hold so much flower pollen.

            There are many more flowers

            than could have blown into the cave of Shanidar

            with the wind;

            even during the most violent storms.

            The grains of pollen are all that remains

            of hollyhock, grape hyacinth, bachelor buttons, and groundsel-

            beautiful blossoms which faded into dust.

            All we can say for certain

            about this dead troglodyte,

            60,000 years after the fact,

            is that this short, squat, thick-skulled brute

            whose life was ruled by blade, blood, and butchering,

            was that someone loved him

            and loved him dearly

            enough to place beautiful flowers in his grave.

Gary Every, Arizona, USA

Moth Stream by Gary Every

The moon shines through my window at midnight
as I toss and turn, unable to sleep
but I am capable of dreaming plenty.
It is not the moon which keeps me awake
nor even the wind
which rattles the leaves in the trees
and shakes my window frame.
It is knowledge which gives me insomnia.
I have recently learned something startling.
Moths, tiny soft fuzzy winged insects,
can somehow sense the direction of the wind
and as the seasons change
so that the moths feel the need to migrate,
all the moths at once,
elevate a mile or two into the sky
where the breeze tosses the tiny airborne creatures
in the direction they wish to go,
hurling them swiftly,
as fast as sixty miles an hour.
How extraordinary it must be
to be so tiny and be flung so fast
and so far.
Do the moths have any grasp
of the massive geography they cover so quickly?
Outside my window nighttime flowers bloom,
trumpeting datura and white yuccas flickering atop their stalks
like candle flames,
beckoning for the moths to drop from the sky.
I lie awake at night unable to sleep
trying to imagine millions of moths
two miles above my bed
soaring through the air at sixty miles an hour,
cursed with insomnia
caught up in a streaming dream of moths.

Gary Every, Arizona, USA