Bio
Mark A. Murphy is the editor of the online journal, POETiCA REViEW. His poetry collections include Tin Cat Alley (1996), Our Little Bit of Immortality (2011), Night-watch Man & Muse (2013), To Nora, A Singer of Sad Songs (2019), and Night Wanderer's Plea (2019). His next full length collection, The Ontological Constant is due out in June (2020) in a bi-lingual German/English edition from Moloko Print in Germany.
Mark A. Murphy
Helen V
A yellow wagtail declares its presence
in the stream hopping from stone to stone
with a whistle and a song as if to grab
our attention. We wonder what locale
it is from? Could it be the same bird
from an earlier poem searching us out?
Certainly, things have changed, our bird
isn't searching for insects this time
and we're not searching for love because
it already resides here in each other.
The sound of the stream is noisy,
rushing over the rocks like wind returning
in the highest branches of the tall trees.
We sit on the veranda surveying the scene,
writing, communicating our ideas while
the small bird preens itself in the morning sun.