Painting Nocturnal Birds
—After paintings by Rex Brasher in Birds and Trees of North America
With the nightjars, I always intrude
on some top-secret discussion.
One speckled Chuck-wills-widow
eyes me sideways as if to say,
You don’t belong in the night.
Another gapes his wide whiskered beak
at me like a cottonmouth promising
poison. So, we’re all pretending.
This painted vision of them
settled in easy blue light,
slim and slick as cream dishes
at a tea party, is only in my head.
Even when I hunt the dusk
for their music, turn my dim eyes
to the leaf carpet and soften
my footfalls to nothing, I am glad,
in a way, the forest never gives them up.
With the nightjars, I always intrude
on some top-secret discussion.
One speckled Chuck-wills-widow
eyes me sideways as if to say,
You don’t belong in the night.
Another gapes his wide whiskered beak
at me like a cottonmouth promising
poison. So, we’re all pretending.
This painted vision of them
settled in easy blue light,
slim and slick as cream dishes
at a tea party, is only in my head.
Even when I hunt the dusk
for their music, turn my dim eyes
to the leaf carpet and soften
my footfalls to nothing, I am glad,
in a way, the forest never gives them up.
Do You Know the Bur Oaks?
—After a “Nature News” flyer, c. 1913
You must meet them.
Visit the shade--The leaves
have the broad-shouldered silhouette
which is so fashionable this year.
I hear the acorns are edible
in season. Do you remember
from childhood their huge furred hats,
your dolls’ newest headwear?
Aren’t these the oaks you see
when you think oak?
Listen, one in Missouri
is four-hundred years old,
lightning-tough in floods and drought.
A fire raged in its core
while you worried about yourself,
the tiny lines around your eyes.
Firefighters swarmed the trunk,
and the tree took a deep breath.
And to think you’ve never
even asked its advice.
You must meet them.
Visit the shade--The leaves
have the broad-shouldered silhouette
which is so fashionable this year.
I hear the acorns are edible
in season. Do you remember
from childhood their huge furred hats,
your dolls’ newest headwear?
Aren’t these the oaks you see
when you think oak?
Listen, one in Missouri
is four-hundred years old,
lightning-tough in floods and drought.
A fire raged in its core
while you worried about yourself,
the tiny lines around your eyes.
Firefighters swarmed the trunk,
and the tree took a deep breath.
And to think you’ve never
even asked its advice.
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Aza Pace’s debut poetry collection, Her Terrible Splendor, won the 2024 Emma Howell Rising Poet Prize and is forthcoming from Willow Springs Books. Her poems appear in The Southern Review, Copper Nickel, Tupelo Quarterly, Crazyhorse, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. She is the winner of two Academy of American Poets University Prizes and holds an MFA from the University of Houston and a PhD from the University of North Texas. She currently teaches at Ohio Wesleyan University.
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