Bird of Light, Long Neck,
Thing-That-Is-Red–-
she knows nothing of names
nor emperor
who ate her tongue
with peacocks' brains and lampreys' semen.
She wades in the dazzle of shallows,
scoops mud with her beak, sifts for plankton.
Her mate, too, makes the thick crop-milk,
knows their chick's cry apart from others.
Thousands, blood-red-feathered to the horizon,
swim thin air, twist-preen, bow--
I'm learning to hold one leg aloft.
father, mother, give me a red milk
Joan Larkin's most recent books are Blue Hanuman and My Body: New and Selected Poems, both published by Hanging Loose Press.