Apaches

The Apaches whirl low and loud

over the house today. They rattle the timbers,

they quaver the trees, shaking off twigs

and the empty nests of last year’s birds.

There are all kinds of birds

in the air here: the broad black wings

of bickering crows, the silent gliding circles

of hawks, distant Chinook and low Apache.

My father would know the variations

by the shape of the nose or the rotor’s whoop:

D-model from A, but I know them only by lazy

or rushing, by swoop or hover, when the sky is blue.

Day and night, when the weather is nice,

you hear them call to each other:

the stutter and cough of the gun on the nose,

the singular boom of rockets on the range.

No where else has these kinds of birds.

No where else feels loud enough without them.

The post Apaches appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.