Shag

Shag

and these regions now have little to say for themselves

except in thousands of light song-sparrow songs floating upwards

freely, dispassionately, through the mist, and meshing

in brown-wet, fine torn fish-nets.

                                                Elizabeth Bishop

                                                "Cape Breton"

The way my father would shape

the word in his throat and bring it up

gargling you could tell hew didn't like

the bird: shag.  And his whole

lower jaw would sag and he'd say

they all oughta be shot.  They were noting

at all to look at, especially dripping on

rusted front railings on bridges we'd need

to cross to get to the next town.

The water brought up feathers against

the grain, their breasts mostly

and they'd curl and shake

and be the cliché snake against

the coming of the night.  They extended

their wings for moments and moments

to dry (they are not water-

proof, these birds) Maybe he hated

the way they'd be waiting

when he waded with his nets

and liquor and moon and the smooch

of his boots in the tidal river-

mud.  They foretold like cheap one-night-

stand diviners an easy

go of it just like all the rest

and they'd squawk and flap and make out

to be nothing less

than clumsy and come up from the water

with a gullet bulging

and of course there's never enough

for them and his buckets--(but

the rock bottom truth never really changes: we see

ourselves in everything.  Like how long, say,

does a dog have to shake, dehydrated

on the bare floor of a draughty, at-the-end-

of-a-lane-on-trash-day dog house 

before someone takes it into their own

arms and rubs its coat and soaks off

the shit and embedded choke

chain and not vomit all the way through

the raw meat cleaved beneath the fur

and the stoic and reserved whimper

of the huskey/shepherd mix?  He was colored

like those birds.  He'd give a paw

and curl it dainty as their necks

after they'd had their fill and rested

their bill on their breast.  Shag.  Of course

my father was gone by then.  Which left

my mother coming undone in her cotton

bathrobe and bare feet and meeting

not for the first time believe me

the ice she'd ass-sweep on her way to feed

the dog.  Wet and shivering

we lifted him bones

and all to the fresh manger

of hay we'd begged 

from the neighbor.  We'd brought it home

in buckets we'd emptied

of rusted awls and axe heads

and some, perfectly square and hand-

knit, net, cut from, what?  From what?

and resembling, when we spread them

out, a pair of cormorant wings not 

in flight but spread, perched, drying

after the deep dive.