November

Stephen Energia Gifford-Bell

and spring has sprung like a trap.
Just above my porch a sudden gust.
A dusty chimango riding currents cuts
across my view. It disappears
above the roof, curves back through,
disappears. Loops and swoops
like an ungoverned kite. The wind
may whip it, but the bird rides
the violence. Within the trees
lightning-fingered around me, smaller
birds chirp the chirp of dying

smoke detectors. Maybe this is the trap:
the way the living rhymes with the dying.
Further in the blue above, teros terrorize
each other—a turf war, a mating ritual,
I’m not sure. They all cackle
like I’m the butt of their joke.
Earlier, through the window,
a chimango with a gleam
of meat in its beak. The trap revisited:
all this living rhymes with my dead.
All this blue, a shade of red.