~ Delta Poetry Review ~

The Golden Swamp Warbler

is officially known as the prothonotary warbler,

named after the yellow-hooded Catholic scribes

of another era no one recognizes today.

Saddled with an unwieldy name, the bird is

hardly religious, yet we see them on Easter

weekend at Noxubee Wildlife Refuge, yellow

egg-shaped birds flitting between cypress,

and later at the picnic grounds, we hear their warbling

high in the pines above loud, brightly colored

townsfolk, who take free canoes and kayaks

out on Bluff Lake. My son and I join them

for an hour of warm spring sun on cool water.

Clumps of cypress, lily pads, and reeds rise

from the shallow lake, where we spot

a pair of tricolored herons, several

white egrets, and then one lone golden

swamp warbler who lights on a bare

dead tree trunk inches from our gaze.

We drift close as quietly as we can and admire

this bright gift of color, until this splash of gold

against the blue of lake and sky flashes away.

Cathedral

After the night of heavy storms

along the swollen creek banks

cypress knees wave peace signs

at the universe. The sun dawns

calm and yellow, as water runs off

in rivulets, surveying the land.

But for a few downed limbs

it would be hard not to imagine

that last night’s winds and sheets

of rain were not a dream, a childish

nightmare, hard not to believe in

the promise of the tooth fairy, that

out of pain comes something good.

Listen to the birds in the trees:

you cannot see them, but believe

their song. Look at the early sun

falling through the catehdral arches

of trunks and branches. Feel

a gentle breeze caress your cheek.

Ghost Deer

Driving home from Meridian late at night,

we begin to see deer in the pitch dark ditches,

first one lone doe looking longingly at the road,

then a pair and soon whole deer families,

ghostly in the dim white refracted light

of the headlight’s beam. Their eyes gleam

green, always seeming to look right at us,

though some are bending down to graze.

We are thankful to see them and more

thankful that they hold to their positions

in the ditches. In our mind’s eye, we witness

the carnage that would happen if they bolted,

knowing we would end up among the wreckage.

These ghost deer silently graze, silently

bide their time, observing an uneasy truce.

Kendall Dunkelberg directs the low-residency MFA at Mississippi University for Women, where he also directs the Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium and edits Poetry South. His poems have appeared recently in Postcard Poetry & Prose and Tar River Poetry, and he is author of the poetry collections Landscapes and Architectures, Time Capsules, and Barrier Island Suite. He has also published the introductory creative writing textbook A Writer’s Craft.