Three Poems by Howard Winn: Tree of Sea Birds, Florida to Die For, Dining in the Big Apple

Three Poems
by Howard Winn

Tree of Sea Birds

Pelicans fill the tree,
seeming to hang from branches
like lost kites,
children’s toys entangled
by strings let loose.
But they are birds instead,
white but dark forms against
the blue Florida sky.
Can they be recaptured
by the child still
hidden in the grown-up
bird-watcher.
So many pelicans
of Sanibel
they appear to weight
the scrawny tree
which bows to the sea
in the wind offshore,
but does not break.
Are they all waiting
to fish in the tide,
to shake off the awkward
shape and sail again
likes kites without string.

Florida to Die For

She collects shells by the sandy sea shore,
nose down and shoulders hunched,
as she walks the white grains of stone
crunching under her bare soles
to find conch, cockle, cardita, and calico scallop,
olive, triton’s trumpet, lightning whelk.
She watches only the ground,
sand and sea weed at her feet,
never looking up at the soaring birds
or the roiling clouds heralding
a storm from the Gulf as they dim her sun.
She collects sarcophagi for her coffee table
and Florida is her coffin
where her shell will be entombed.

Dining in the Big Apple

Eating well has become an avocation for the in-crowd.
On Wednesdays with the New York Times’ Dining Section in hand,
the truly dedicated to the latest fashions in eating,
swallow one by one the latest recipe and its exotic contents,
preparing to impress similar friends who have also sanctified,
as if it were some sacred shrine dedicated to communion
with the blood and body of the holy redeemer,
the kitchen with its professional equipment far in excess
of what the mundane maker of family meals requires,
as if they were delving into the formula for dark matter.
The laboratory of the latest kitchen requires the uncommon.
In another world, soup kitchens and dumpsters feed
the lost and nameless who do not matter to the ones
who live high and eat well.

Howard Winn's writing, both poetry and fiction, has been published by such journals as Dalhousie Review, Descant (Canada), Break the Spine, Cactus Heart, Iodine Poetry Journal, New York Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, Raven Chronicles, Borderlands, Xavier Review and Toyon. His B. A. is from Vassar College. He has an M. A. in creative writing from Stanford University. His doctorial work was done at N.Y.U. He has been a social worker in California where he also taught for three years. Currently he is a faculty member of SUNY where he is professor of English.

Copyright 2014, © Howard Winn. This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.