Good Year

January. I pluck it,

this feather flapping in the high mesquite

only head-high, caught by the down,

iridescent, turkey. Another

feather hugging the ditch

along the fence line and another...

A coyote somewhere naps

happy, grinning like the feather

evolved from a leaf. What luck.

Clouds lift above the field

as if to swallow my eye

into hunger. Good hunger.

The greatest eye must

behold me like an ember

dropped into a finch nest,

and I smoke at the mouth

like a gun dreaming in a safe

of a war it can win by virtue

of its praise. I have lost

the killer phrase I concocted

on my country walk

with the feather in my pocket.

I cock it.