Michael Klein

BLUE ST. BIRD

When Bert said “birds” I asked him why
he loved them—a stupid question to ask
anybody when it comes to hitching passion
to something. If someone asked me
why racehorses? Why those years of lives
running in front of my life & throwing a blanket
again & again over the earthy animal steam
rising from their bodies afterwards
or finishing a race day with my hand
in the dinner feed tub later when it meets
the private good feeling of mixing hot water
with the oats & the bran to make a mash.
If someone asked me why the races
in New York & Florida & not just
Belmont & Aqueduct but night races too
& the lesser tracks in Grove City, Ohio, &
Florence, Kentucky, I might have answered,
because there was a way through what had once
been the fear of horses & I walked straight
into their blessing—the communion of horses
together or with people & breaking
the seal between whom I was & who
I became each morning in the barn
when I stood transfixed by the light
in the shine of the straw they slept on.
There are whole days then when I forgot
the man I love because the job of my heart
is to get me alone with a horse—like Bert’s heart
means being alone with birds: for the flash
of beauty he answers—a description that stuns
me with lavish accuracy & I have to repeat
it under my breath to make sure it was for the flash
of beauty & then break it down to a single flash—& feeling
of flash until the word rises away from the sentence & finally burns out.

MICHAEL KLEIN is a five-time Lambda Book Award finalist and two-time winner in poetry. He has recent work in Fence. His latest book is The Early Minutes of Without: Poems Selected & New (Word Works, 2023). He lives in Newport, Rhode Island, and is currently working on a book of true crime.