Kevin Boyle

Toast 

Though there are no parades

for the trees, they do have champions

that, because of width and height and beauty

even in winter, are applauded

and marked with a green circle

on the park’s map.  If my wife asks,

“What are you celebrating now?”            

I put down the glass and take her

by hand out to the park formed

in a landslide a century ago and there

the two are—a beech as large as

the ocean and a magnificent plane.

I’m toasting the winners again,

I’m listening to their postgame silence,

I’m measuring how far their victory roots inch down,

I’m imagining the chests I could make,

how many doors, an entire navy of ships,

but then I let the trees be.

That’s why I’m lifting a cup today.

But yesterday, she says, it was the stone

in the steeple and the rounded apse wall.

I know, I say, there is so much to toast and honor

in this world, even the gnarly apple tree

and the crazed, short vineyard stocks,

and don’t let me get started

on the deep lakes and rivers, even those

we cannot smell or see, buried in culverts

we walk on.  Don’t you see, we walk on water.

Why not lift and celebrate each moment before

the sudden or prolonged drying out to the bone?

Wild Nature in Town                                                           

The seagulls here have maybe never seen the sea,

they survive on fresh rubbish and curves in the architecture,

they love the narrow passages, but not the snicketts and graveyards

with new holes recently topped.  They make a racket

even as they lighten their loads to imitate the clouds more.

Their household income, not including the nest, hovers

above the bubble in the spirit level.  They cannot read the signs 

telling everyone not to feed them even morsels, so they must feel welcome.

They’ve stayed for centuries.  When children chase them,

they lift off by using their feet, then wings, heavyset, then off.

When I see their eyes eyeing food they didn’t grow or cook,

I think they know they are a verb meaning to deceive, cheat, trick, fool. 

When I find their white feathers beautiful, I try not to reward the gulls

lest they get a big head.  When I hear them speak,

I think, I, too, was once like this,

we are kin once removed.

We both like the river that comes gushing through town

on its way to its own mouth.  And we both sing

so poorly, the blackbird—who is melodious—has broken off

all contact and lives among the wild thorns and well-armed brambles.

Cleaned and Pressed

The gift would arrive once a month

wrapped we now know in a noxious, toxic solvent

used to clean my father’s work shirts,

but the cardboard piece where the chest would be

was also like a canvas already stretched and primed,

a rectangular cage for the animals I drew

so poorly no one could know who they were

as they walked two by two onto the ark, the flat art boat,

and once I had assembled the crew

I’d let the magic carpet lift off and fly by my hand

to the bathtub where I’d keep the animals in dry dock

until the deluge arrived and I’d help them float

toward the drain I’d lift and let them know

they now were safe, though smeared with the tub’s rains,

and I promised never to send squalls ever again

until the next month when I created the scene once more,

this time with more families than animals and birds,

so much control, so much punishment from the youngest

in a large family my father disciplined with an iron rod.