Scott
Ferry and Daniel McGinn, Fill Me With Birds (Meat for Tea
Press, 2024) 104 pages, poetry, $16.95. Order here.
Those
nights when you stay up past midnight and the conversations go silly and then
profoundly deep, that's what this is.
Two
mature men muse on everything from aging parents to children, to marriage, to
health issues, to overcoming addiction, to God, to the changing of seasons, to
resentment and forgiveness. The poems are written as if letters or emails going
back and forth. But in my head cannon, they are sitting in a late-night living
room in front of a fire passing a (legal) smoke between them.
At
times, it can feel almost too intimate and honest for the reader to eavesdrop
on politely. This is good stuff.
Most of
the lines I made note of were Scott Ferry's, I think, though I didn't track who
wrote which line. If you want to know that, you can read it. But here are some
of the lines that stood out to me:
"I
know now it is too late for/ bargaining// the best I can manage/ is
obsolescence"
"the
face of god: is the inside of longing when there is no waiting left"
"Nerves
are like brains,/ remember how we used to be? The body knows/ what is and isn't
there."
"I
lost the easy talk/ I did not want to impress anyone anymore"
"solve/
hate like a controlled burn/ near a freeway"
"I
still have a fire a fire a fire"
On
meditation, some of these poems are darker and heavier than they appear. The
request to "fill me with birds" seems to be a wish for a lightening
of the soul from the burdens voiced through these conversations.
