Green Heron,
Audubon Plate CCCXXXIII
My mouth opens
like morning
to swallow
this tailed-scale
of the moon
now faltering,
leaving the sky
empty-bellied.
Black Vulture or Carrion Crow,
Audubon Plate CVI
My beloved and I
straddle
whatever body
was reason enough
to fall back
to earth.
At the cusp
of our entry,
we cradle
each other,
me below her,
lilting right
so we may both
see where is softest.
Pass through
our own reflections
to find what sound
of ourselves
called us down
here again.
Bell of my body
still pealing.
Bell of her body
hummed.
Noah Davis’s poetry collection Of This River was selected for the 2019 Wheelbarrow Emerging Poet Book Prize from Michigan State University’s Center for Poetry, and his poems and prose have appeared in The Sun, Southern Humanities Review, Best New Poets, Orion, The Year’s Best Sports Writing, North American Review, and River Teeth, among others. Davis earned an MFA from Indiana University and now lives with his wife, Nikea, in Missoula, Montana.
Read poetry by Noah Davis previously appearing in Terrain.org: two poems and two poems.
Header image, Black Vulture or Carrion Crow, Audubon Plate CVI, courtesy Joel Oppenheimer, Inc..
