Dead Storks Poem by Patti Masterman

Joy comes down to one morning lost;
And one more, clouded eyes can't see,
Gloom filtered by dawn’s waking up,
And false skies, lovely as any painting.

The pulse racing fast, then slowing down,
The basket full but empty; worse,
Bounty’s imitator, in every way appearing
But not in substance, and never worth.

(Space uncurving itself gracefully,
Knowing never where to look,
but where not to focus) .

Subdued are the blue fields,
Striking light, the brandished suns,
Greeting green tilled fields,
Pantomiming charades begun;

(The unburst fullness, and gathering greyness
Filling in the shadows muted brilliance) .

Death once-born, of changing measure;
Not an etude or a requiem’s time,
But maybe a still pond, on some pale Winter's day,
Where nothing happens beneath white omens of ice.

No thing moves and the purity’s grotesque,
Like pristine gurneys, under long-dead infants,
Wrapped in shrouded linen snows;
Or outlines of the dead birds below.