BY SHARON WHITEHILL
--Thanks to Simon Pokagon, Potawatomi tribal leader, for the images
My father shouts Pull!
his shotgun tracing the arc
of those little gray plates
called clay pigeons
that fly every which way
against the blue lake.
*
Millions of passenger pigeons,
one living mass pouring down,
a feathered meteor shower.
An army of horses laden with sleigh bells
advancing through the deep forest,
a distant thunder
although the morning is clear.
*
The best place to be at the gun club
is outside in the grass
after the shooting is finished
spent shells pebbling the ground
red, yellow, and green
some still warm in my hands.
*
With the sun blotted out,
horses bolted, children screamed,
women gathered long skirts
to seek shelter,
men dropped to their knees to pray.
An angel of death passing over
left a ghost town,
white-painted by pigeons,
behind.
*
“Scent” too weak a word
for a smell like burnt matches
so rich I want to eat it
when I breathe deep
of the crimped ends of the shells.
*
Birds so abundant that waving a pole
at low-flying prey was action enough
to bag protein on the wing,
welcome to settlers on the frontier
as bounty for all.
Left it to bounty hunters
to extinguish the species.
*
I dress each finger up in a shell
shiny brass ends clacking loud
to be a lady with long fingernails
or a clatter-clawed monster
then shake them off
in a sprinkler-spray circle
with fingers that keep their perfume
and stay gunpower-sweet all day long.
Sharon Whitehill is a retired English professor from West Michigan now living in Port Charlotte, Florida. In addition to poems published in various literary magazines, my publications include two biographies, two memoirs, two poetry chapbooks, and a full collection of poems. I love literature, I loved teaching, but the richness of retirement is getting to do what I yearned to do during the years of reading student writing: devoting myself to my own. Now that's my "work"--all day, every day apart from meetings, appointments, and social pastimes.
Process Note: My process? What's been true all my life, when I sit down to write, is that the words just rise up and pour out.