Binocular

That flinch hovering by the yew–
what’s in his beak, a dot or a dash?
A black dog, or a dot, is sleeping on the glass.

The first robbers of spring: they’re
flatter, more bloodthirsty than last year.
All over the wet lawn, pulling up apostrophes.

The little dot, pixel, prances in circles, parking.

After one long night’s rain I spy a word,
flat as my shoestring, tasty as licorice,
desiccating on the flagstone.

My side of the glass is the clean side.
The outside’s streaked with feather dust, pollen,
dog snot running down the surface like tear tracks.

Someone saw squirrel tracks on the lawn,
feather and yolk, and shell shards. The thieves!
Somebody wrote this with their finger on the glass.
But it wasn’t me. My side of the grass is green.

Karen Rile

“Binocular” appears in the current issue of Superstition Review and was reprinted in the Sunday, February 23, 2014 issue of The Philadelphia Inquirer

– See more at: http://superstitionreview.asu.edu/issue12/poetry/karenrile#sthash.ylKHYU3r.dpuf