Where murmuration
of birds under dark sky
is often invisible
without obsidian mirror,
a tiny cloud glimmers,
poised to rain a single
poem.
Under Waters
As above
Tag: bird
Hour of Bird
Call and response
And since it was no good sitting like that, choking in the sweltering attempt at stillness, the youngest among us started crying and the rest joined in. It was wondrous! Lamentations get short shrift in a culture of bucking up and keeping calm but look where that’s got us. We wept until we exploded with laughter and then we wept some more until we were singing. No one had the notes or the words and no one could remember them later. But in that moment, we all knew––by heart, as the saying goes, without faltering. The wingbeat of that hour dawned an owl in the heart of us, to call who? Who? and howl, and the only way to keep on listening was to call back, and we did.
Bird Signs
And what resists containment.
Careful to note the care of the thrush at her nest, and her attendant song, we were determined to find joy in witness. Its light would not shine except in grief, and a long record of bird notes reveals that we could scarcely see their winged grace without noting everywhere the flights and visitations of our dead friends. The substance of our trembling was never so vivid as when it flowed from us.
Escape, Artist
An interruption.
Listen, the wing somewhere upstairs.
The sound of a cry still seeking a mouth.
How it flails behind the closed doors
against tease of glass pane
trying for sky.
Wing
In the aftermath of fracture.
When the stone sky locks the angels out, who watches for the saints beneath a daily march, crunching underfoot? Grains of sand, listen: which of your every has ears? Without compass or clock, I can answer only, no, I do not know the way or have the time; please resist the impulse to make me a metaphor. Put down your pen and help me look. It was all in a pocket under this wing, along with a spare key to the late morning blue. We were supposed to practice today, scales of light and choreography of chroma, and I had soft branches to buttress the round of the new nest. The babies–– It’s cold enough to see it in the air when I call and here it is again, this cry, I am.