Governor's Island Trip
Today, now that the Coast
Guard has abandoned this
Beachhead to New Yorkers,
And the Parks Department
Has opened it to the
Public, wandering I
Almost tripped over a
Red, trembling hawk with sad
Eyes and a broken wing
In front of the emptied
Mess hall, and behind the
Cobwebbed captains’ quarters,
I spotted a puffed-up,
Conquering rose-gray dove,
But back in Manhattan
When I declare this, who
Will believe me when I
Swear this is not simply
A shameless metaphor?
Guard has abandoned this
Beachhead to New Yorkers,
And the Parks Department
Has opened it to the
Public, wandering I
Almost tripped over a
Red, trembling hawk with sad
Eyes and a broken wing
In front of the emptied
Mess hall, and behind the
Cobwebbed captains’ quarters,
I spotted a puffed-up,
Conquering rose-gray dove,
But back in Manhattan
When I declare this, who
Will believe me when I
Swear this is not simply
A shameless metaphor?
Crow Sonnet
A murder is formed by how many crows?
In my front yard, I see a black cloud form.
Each one caws bitterly while flood tide flows.
Their wing-waves fan the season’s latest storm.
They eat from black barrels with opened lids.
They swarm at the top of my front-yard tree.
They fight. They peck. Their gazes peer morbid.
We stare eye-to-eye on my balcony.
I paint no suicide field like Van Gogh
When they blink first. They quoth no “nevermore”
To make me howl like Edgar Allen Poe,
No. This is the new South, not like before.
I need no scarecrow, for I scare my crows.
I grow griefs more gothic than a crow knows.
In my front yard, I see a black cloud form.
Each one caws bitterly while flood tide flows.
Their wing-waves fan the season’s latest storm.
They eat from black barrels with opened lids.
They swarm at the top of my front-yard tree.
They fight. They peck. Their gazes peer morbid.
We stare eye-to-eye on my balcony.
I paint no suicide field like Van Gogh
When they blink first. They quoth no “nevermore”
To make me howl like Edgar Allen Poe,
No. This is the new South, not like before.
I need no scarecrow, for I scare my crows.
I grow griefs more gothic than a crow knows.
Anne Babson is the author of four published collections of poetry — The White Trash Pantheon (2015), Polite Occasions (2017), Messiah (2019) and The Bunker Book, (2022). Her play Reeenactment was published in Review Americana. Her opera libretto Lotus Lives has been performed in five cities. Her work has appeared in literary journals on five continents. She is president of the Women's National Book Association of New Orleans. She teaches at Southeastern Louisiana University