Three Awkward Ears

I

It rains it rains shepherdess, rains on the river – as
if on thicker liquids, cream or latex, raindrops stot it
to pitted rings in water, which swell to hoops of water.

Up gallop young men, each of them pleasingly sharpened
to hunt down dormant crepitus in smooth sprawled limbs
since, speaking botanically, flowering’s a sign of distress.

Beribboned looms the large one, stolid in his pale satin
who was ever gravely loving but was not much loved back –
he’s ruffed for the arching gleam and flop of tulip heads.

Some buxom clouds lollop along, gloweringly under-lit
past russet trees brushed dark, fine-feathered by sable hair.
What’s that inhuman call, far into the woods of no ears.

II

High confident calling

to no one it knows of

from no throaty talker

nor squirreled in ears

it fans out to soar over

gaping-jawed screens

or dilate that one iris as

purplish as hearts whose

it isn’t – so, pulsating to

mouth every anyone, it

uncoils as invoking –

opens its confiding peal.

III

ice-burned tongues
clump into celestine’s
eye-blue spar & chink
on snow-muffled ears