Jenny Isaacs
Gymnogyps californianus (California Condor)
A condor is five per cent feathers, flesh, blood, and bone. All the rest is place. David Brower
Edward Abbey's querulous drunken ghost
is hissing at me on the Navajo Bridge
he has opinions about the cold green Colorado
which should be warm and red with sediment
he has opinions about the vinyl patagial
tags attached to the loose wing-skin
of all four condors on the rocky shore
even the wild-hatched one we're marveling at
this was a project that made him spit
with rage until he died spitting blood
offended by those who'd turn a bird
into a flying radio station with a number
every river I touch, he said,
turns to heartbreak
Mergus merganser (Common Merganser)
Like mismatched prom couples each November
mergansers debut on the river
sleek-tuxed black-and-white males
with pale gray, ginger-mohawked, punk females.
Fish gripped in serrated orange bills
flipped still flapping head to tail
swallowed with style: this gluttonous, muscular,
diving knot of predators, my calendar.
Come spring, if it's slow
I'll long to see you churn off: Fly now! go!
Let tree swallows flock in to eat the air, let season change—
I will not miss the stuttered double of your Latin name.
Then you're gone
and again it is autumn.
Come back. Be my saw-toothed clock in the fall,
be my chilly water and my rapid reversal.
Make me think winter, make me think snow.
Think: how many years now? I won't know.
Jenny Isaacs recently published her first chapbook, The Argument of Time (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have appeared in Mezzo Cammin, Pedestal, and Thimble. She lives on a creek off the Chesapeake Bay.