Doris Brody
REALITY CHECK
That’s what it is, you know,
this rising in early dawn,
listening for calls, fragments of song,
looking at dark shapes in the gray light,
this need to see into fog,
this trying to find what you’ve
seen in the past, this checking
to see if it’s there, still there,
this needing to know,
this obsession that starts
with the color of dawn.
And the mist does lift⎯not always,
but often. And the sun does rise
and day brightens. The shapes
become clear, tanagers, trogons,
and toucans appear. The colors
of feathers grow brighter
than all imitations, brighter
than you can imagine⎯sun, feathers,
eye all real. It is checking the real,
this obsession that burns
with the color of feathers.
DON’T BE GREEDY, FATHER SAID
“Don’t pick armloads of daisies,
asters, goldenrod, Queen Anne’s lace,
or Joe Pye weed. If you leave them,
the meadow blooms again.
Don’t pick even one trillium,
or the whole plant dies.”
Each spring and into summer,
I watch my hummingbirds,
aerial acrobats, metallic green and,
then, in sunlight, the iridescent ruby
flash. Bird, but not a bird,
a little bigger than a bee.
Each spring and into summer,
I listen as my thrush fills my valley
with his song, not just birdsong
but music, rolling, pealing,
lifting from early morning until dusk,
he sings for me, for me.
I no longer strip wild meadows, but
each spring and into summer,
I cannot get enough
of hummingbirds and thrushes.
Father, I have failed.
I lust.
Doris Brody’s first full-length book of poems, Judging the Distance, was published in 2001 by The Word Works Capital Collection. She has published her poems in literary journals and magazines nationwide, has been a Jenny McKean Moore fellow in creative writing at George Washington University and has read at numerous venues throughout the Washington D.C. area, including the Library of Congress.
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