Ain’t No Walk in the Park

I turn to the deer
in the town wood and someone
gives me magpie feathers

It’s too far tonite
I turn and see the sunset
down through the trees

To the arch of the fount
strange standing images round
the way time just flows

Feathers often have
more color on the under
side than the outer

When you put them in
your hat sometimes it is best
to do it that way

Oh, warning cry bird
who hides its blue azure
in its rowing wings

Always heard rarely
if ever to be seen way up
in those top branches

Your call is telling
us all we better watch out
crisis is waiting

A still place garden
fountain flowing in fading
light this end of day.

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.