David Chorlton

Invocation

Time to talk the gods out
from inside the mountain. To show themselves

to the ravens, to raccoons, to
the hummingbirds;

let them cast off centuries
of darkness and come

out from where the bobcat sleeps, call
into the night and take the moon

beneath a wing the way
owls do. Give mystery a face, begin

a day with sunlight
dripping from their lips. Have them

call the calls of those who came before,
unsecret what

the rocks have known
since stars were young, just break

out from underground and stand
in clear sight on the slopes

teeth bared and the hairs
raised all along their backs.

Chill

Desert cold this morning, following
a Curve- billed thrasher
cholla to cholla, close
to the ground. Thorns
in the call, a dip and
a rise before
disappearing. It’s a day the seasons
will not claim. Saguaros
can’t read the sky, they don’t
know whether it will rain
tonight or send
a shower of stardust down. The mesquites
swear allegiance to the sparrows
and the sparrows to
the creosote. The light has no sense
of the temperature, doesn’t
know how cold it feels
to stand and wait for March
to rescue February. Yellow blooming
Brittlebush, call and response
from bird to hidden bird. Sunlight
balanced on the ridge.
A wind without borders
shining on its way from the sky.

Pyrocephalus rubinus

Stinkweed, Mallow, Brittlebush,
a single unplanned Sunflower
smiling from among the weeds that populate
the wash that’s dry
and only pretty to the Mockingbirds
who sing warmth
back into the air. A day worth
speaking for as ordinary as
the Mourning doves and sparrows busy
with the sandy ground in all
their feathered modesty. And the entire planet
is spinning underfoot, eight hundred
miles an hour the park
is moving, carrying all who walk there,
or throw balls for a dog. All the years
packed deep inside the nearby desert
lie unevenly at rest the way
millennia of chaos
had them become. An earthtones
day; grass and topsoil, rock
and mesquite, the mountain with
its buried thoughts
insists on staying where it stands.
There’s trouble somewhere
taking the back roads, smoke
rising to the east
and the usual battering of opinion against
opinion from coast to
speeding coast. Nothing much
unusual. No TV cameras
filming here. No arrests. And just for those
who take the time to look
a tiny bird whose plumage is a drop
of fire among the mesquite branches.

Orange-crowned Warbler

First memory is of leaving the hospital
where he was born; blue sky,
an arc of blanket and the nuns looking on
with their starched cornettes. Their hats
had wings and they’d fly. Who’d ever
believe someone who spends so long alone
with time to seek excitement in the ordinary,

which word describes the city he grew up in;
red brick and smoke, the number fifty
bus, with rain and morning prayer
at school. Our father . . . please obey instructions
and do not assume that God supports the same team
that your father does. His parents

lived through the war but on opposite sides:
first lesson in patriotism.
Then there were trains, the night run
to baroque extravagance and a one-room
apartment with a view that history books
don’t mention. He was happy where he was
so foreign even his birth certificate gave
him the name of a stranger. The lesson:

family is not a word for trust. Education?
Not much, just the appetite
to see in other countries what God
and propaganda mean. Never looked for trouble
but it found him anyway. He still
had the quiet life he craved, and after all
redacted pages are accounted for

misfortune found him, took
a second bite but didn’t like
the taste. Doesn’t go far now, just into
the desert and home to backyard birds.
Look: an Orange crowned warbler.

 

David Chorlton lives in Phoenix and looks back on many trips once taken to various countries and around Arizona. He currently takes lessons in poetry (and painting) from a familiar patch in a nearby desert preserve. In brief, pay attention to the small things and use what is seen as a lens through which to focus on broader ideas.