Three Poems by Don Thompson

Incident on the Road to Tupman

by

Don Thompson

thumbnail artwork by Rene Castro

A fledgling dove just above me

concealed among pistachio leaves

panics as I walk by,

trespassing in a corporate grove.

Startled, I share with her

the fear so close to us all—

bird and man

and the orphaned infant coyote

I’m following with a cup of water.

Thin and ephemeral, frightened,

with no hope of survival,

he keeps dancing away from me.

Sad. But that wingtip

flicking the back of my neck

has reassured me somehow,

though there are no words to say why.

 

Competing for Apricots

A crow fatter than a pullet

with a beak like a case-hardened chisel

perches on a fencepost:

You can tell how self-assured he is,

how he takes on life with élan,

knowing he will be fed

in this world of unlimited insects,

roadkill replenished every night,

lizards dozing in the sun,

and rumors among the corvids

about this summer’s first ripe apricots.

I’ve been watching that tree myself.

 

Night Music at Deep Wells Farm

Only an owl, of course,

and not somebody alone in the dark

who has come across an odd flute

and breathes into it without much skill—

the fingering too hard to learn,

the simplest tune elusive.

But whoever it is keeps sounding,

again and again, compulsively,

the only note no one wants to hear.

Author Bio

Don Thompson is the current (and inaugural) Kern County Poet Laureate in California. His books include A Journal of the Drought Year, Local Color, Everything Barren Will Be Blessed, and Back Roads, winner of the 2008 Sunken Garden Poetry Prize. He was born in Bakersfield, California, and has lived most of his life in the southern San Joaquin Valley, which provides the setting for most of his poems. Don and his wife Chris live on her family’s farm near Buttonwillow in the house that has been home to four generations. More of his work can be found at http://www.don-e-thompson.com/