Tuesday poem #374 : Brianna Ferguson : BOYS AND GIRLS IN THE GARDEN

The old lady of Monday afternoon keeps watch in the park

with her military-grade binoculars.

The birds of the swamp are active today--

heads dripping gutter water as Spring cracks its leather whip

at their colorful backs.

From five hundred meters she can hardly see their colors.

Just black and white forms, male and female,

tagging each other like wedding gifts in a registry.

There is so much sex,

so many flapping bits,

it stands to reason that boy birds,

cousins, brothers, mothers and sons

be tripped by the wires of incestual sins

from time to time.

Older birds take younger birds

without their consent,

choking them in the beaver fever water

as they seek survival through their progeny.

But all this woman sees from this distance is

God’s creatures fluttering in the trees,

fighting and fucking their way

through another Garden.

Brianna Ferguson is a writer and educator located in the Okanagan Valley. Her stories and poems have appeared across Canada, the U.K., and the U.S.A. in magazines and anthologies such as Minola Review, Jokes Review, and The Apocrypha Files.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan