Two poems

For very little reason other than they suit my mood. Both are recent productions. (I've added some improvements to the first poem, including a name change)

Disclosure

Huddled, the black bantam,
Quavers in the dark of not-yet-morn,
And sees in every rustled form a phantom
Of plundering wolf or weasel, solely born

Of falsifying gloom,
That beady eyes conjecture into seeming,
Until dawn breaks all images of doom,
Into the solid shapes its set to gleaming,

Then, as if in pride,
Our fowl stands up and ruffs his feathered mane,
And boasts to the entire countryside,
His "I will duel with all" in rash refrain,

For, when what’s been feared
To do for caution’s sake, can now be done,
And every lingering shadow’s disappeared,
Into the brave arrival of the sun,

Then what sudden strut,
What crowing, and what swaggering about
Ridiculously seizes those who but,
A moment since were shy and dumb with doubt.

Yet let us not mock,
Such innocence and absence of composure.
Joy's source, being revelation should not balk
To revel in an act of such disclosure,

As when lovers, full
Of that same bravery born of morning’s light
Laughing at last night’s discretion, pull,
The covers off their bodies’ honest white.

The Tight-Rope Walker

His body, wholly swept up in the cause,
Of mere remaining, gently tames the cord,
Suspending his slow expedition toward,
A pole shaped like a printer's obelisk.

As stony eyed as any basilisk,
He views with inward eye his statued pause,
Kept by his strict observance of the laws
Of gravity, and wills one taut accord.

This tensile harmony is his reward,
The joy of held control, peaked by the risk,
Recalled to mind with every gentle whisk
His arms make as they weigh his footsteps’ flaws.