Poem: "No Need for a Narrator"

Here's a rare poem in my recovery, as I haven't been able to write a lick:


No Need for a Narrator


The shadow of a raven’s wing
sweeps across the garden like a scythe.
Hummingbirds sample the centranthus,
hearts beating a thousand times a minute,
prehensile beaks straining for nectar,
sucking twice their weight in a day.

Bumblebees hover in poppies,
those frilly bowls of pink
whose bottom petals are marked
with four bloody dots.
For two days of high summer
they bloom until the northwest wind
strips them, leaving green bulbs behind,
strange spheres suspended
on pipe cleaner stems-- not opium poppies
although their milk is just as bitter.

Himalayan blackberry,
each purple branch thick with thorns,
encroaches on the buddleia.
They will smother anything
if not pruned back.
Gloves help but not enough.

A heron flies over, gangly in flight,
its thin legs trailing wasp-like
beneath the great gray wings.
Its bullhorn honk silences sparrows,
even the ubiquitous squawking of jays.

No need for a narrator
in listening for the thrush
and the call of sea lions echoing up the dell
above the ocean’s thrumming--
all anthropostulates have disappeared.


As to my mental state, to my great surprise, I had a good day yesterday, though I didn't do anything different.  The new antipsychotic medication, combined with a therapy session where, through my thick Neanderthal skull, the therapist managed to communicate to me that I had a choice, may have something to do with it.  I am not merely a molecule in Brownian motion; this molecule can choose.

She also pointed out that I had taken my marbles and gone home, said "Fuck you!" to the universe, that I refused to do anything required of me beyond absolute necessity.  I concur.  I do walk the dog, take out the trash, last night I cooked.  Nevertheless I am much like a self-centered infant who won't have his freedom abridged by potty training or any other requirement or limitation of my oral-gratifying, chain-smoking self.

(I do still go in the toilet.)

CE