Tracy Hicks
18 May 11
exquisite corpse study three
2.5 minutes
1st edit _ exquisite corpse contributors:
Tor Linbo, John Simmons, Ron Skylstad, Ed Kowalski, Cynthia Pederson, Lars Osterdahl, Linneaus, Anouar Brahem, Luis Colima, Sofia Lu,
music: University of Kansas Herpetology Department recordings ~ Anouar Brahem
Natural History
With a bite of the Pleistocene
today's brutal winds hint at history,
how winds once scoured our glacial plain,
how even now they'd like to suffocate us
deep in spring-plowed dust and reclaim
our hard-used land.
On my mailbox letter-trek late in the day
I am arrested by death,
by rich indigo plumage below a brick wall:
one broken bunting,
fragile casualty of this unrelenting wind.
Do you know how it howls, scalping
your nerves; how wind dries up everything
inside you; how, on days like this,
you can't think past its incessant pitch and push.
Others name this:
simoom, pampero, bora. . .
I can only stand against it.
I can only stop, stoop and stroke
this indigo bunting.
I'd like for there to be some meaning
in this feathered death.
Science or the Divine,
it's still about how we find meaning.
What a tiny, exquisite corpse,
this beauty that has no weight
but pure color.
Cynthia Pederson
