The Short Imposition of Living
by Matthew Keuter

BIRD POEMS IN A COUNTRY AT WAR

1
A courier pigeon walks into a bar and says to the Emperor’s falcon
All possible universes exist except one
where I love you.

2
Bird watching can be inspirational
when you are unable to fly
to heights

dead children look like sparrows,

for example.

The distance it is safe to follow a woman
is also something men don’t understand

3
-to Rob Cook

13 trumpet trees do not a bandstand of angels make
but 13 blackbirds choiring there
herald an extinction of winter out of the singing air

4

Sometimes crossing a bridge at night
swaddled in low sodium gauze of the alkaline lights
I imagine a migration North inside a moist mouth
on the wingtip of a flock of migrating mouths.

& if you are anything like me
crossing a bridge in the rain at night racked with sobbing
then let us too fall in love now & here

across the distance

across the threshold of the mystery, the mountain we know is there
with its summit & long descent into the valleynot for all it’s true

others may empty into the sea

while I agree to go blindly
into an old country

as mercenary as a pigeon