STEVE DE FRANCE

The Poetry Of..
Steve De France...............................................

BLACKBIRDS

A dappled brown sparrow rests
on a kitchen towel. Neither young nor old
but of some indeterminate age.
Death would not be your first thought
but her breathing comes in short spurts of life,
her feathers ripple as if in a wind, yet the air is still.
She can neither sit nor stand but tilts dangerously
as if taking a curve in the road
or making a steep skyward sparrow-bank,
one that bends time and slides on wind currents
in some larger sky. I press the towel to prop her up.
For a moment she looks at me not afraid
but with assessment.
Buttressed by the towel she can not
tilt to either side, so she falls backward
her head inclines sharply
wings extended high
eyes looking out from some
parallel sparrow universe
some place knowable only to birds.
Startled by a sudden wind gust
blackbirds swirl in expanding circles
their shadows marking the edges
of hemlock trees. Through the sun
it begins to rain.

ANOTHER PRIMATE ON EXHIBIT

Fog bumps over the city's mottled beach,
it swirls across a car-clogged
Ocean Boulevard & charges
the San Francisco Zoo.
It settles there---its ethereal shrouds
covering the animal exhibits & making mystic
the ubiquitous evergreen trees.
Caged flamingos--legs seemingly too delicate to survive
this world---stand etched on spider web legs,
like plastic sentinels on duty in this churning mist.
Obsidian flamingo eyes---forever unblinking
stare at my back---as a coven of shrieking kids
flush me from this exhibit, moving me
toward a more obscure & dangerous path.
Monkey Island.
Time has changed all.
The Island's long gone & so too its
rock-to-ground-to-tree inhabitants.
Today it is only a grubby unyielding
caged pit with two sinister chimpanzees,
a shambling gray & a one eyed black.
I wonder---were they part of the original
island population? Are they all that is left?
There were hundreds of these island comedians,
but then---there was sun & freedom.
I speculate about these two veterans.
Staring into their pit---their dilemma,
dismal---sitting---waiting for death.
Maybe I should bust them lose?
Set them free again?
I sit quiet---thinking on other kinds of prisons,
prisons we design for ourselves,
8 to 5---cubicled jobs, commuter coffins all in a row.
The chimps eye me---roll back their rubbery lips
and scream as if in fear...
yes, I, too, have grown older.

Have they recognized me? We stare now at
one another, as if looking for new questions.
Having long ago given up on answers.
Given up on on most everything,
Given up on hope except to receive
a few random acts of dispassion.

The air temperature dives.
Wind whines & a chill screen
of wet fog pushes across
the wrinkled slate-colored sea,
it rolls toward the ruins of Monkey Island,
rolls toward the ruins of the three of us.
We bind together now, blinded by memories,
dying of time & this enveloping fog.
Past suns & all freedom fades to darkness,
as our over due souls crash into an indifferent universe.
Reaching for my tail, I curl myself into the fog
becoming just another primate on exhibit.

POR LA GRACIA DE DIOS 19

Indians are native to this land,
yet are harshly persecuted.
They live in spite of the rancorous
intolerance of the Mexican Army.
Haplessly they squat right here
in pasteboard boxes & plastic lean-tos.
Carrying an infant like a rag doll
a woman rushes at me.
"Enfermo. Niño enfermo," she says,
dangling the baby close to my face.
I touch its cheek.
Cold.
From my car I fetch water.
A crumbling old man stops me.
His Spanish is guttural, harsh.
"Muerto.v Niño muerto," he says.
She sits quiet---baby in arms.
Rocks back & forth
heel to toe.
Head pitched down,
eyes red---swollen
from so many tears.
In the morning the baby is buried.
The ground so hard that dry dirt crumbles
around the miniature body...
Driving back to the U.S.A.
the baby's short life is on my mind,
strangely what I recall
mostly was its tiny fingers
and perfectly formed fingernails.

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