ELEGY IN WHICH A BIRD APPEARS
I will make of my mind a scrape nest for your absence. Clear a swale
for silences. Hollow it deep. Let it wild be with sorrow.
Let it small psalm home again. And when it becomes difficult
to imagine nothing as solid as a mother’s arms, I will keep on moving
through the grasses in search of smallness, seeds & husks blowing
in the paper air of your voice as I remember it—a quiet abyss.
For this parting takes muscle unnatural. Lift me
into the sun again. I hardly have hands to touch
my sutures. Even the clouds coldly sway. My wrists—
pale fish—move through the surfaces of winter ponds.
Edges, I hover. Every hill becomes a ruin.
Beneath my nails—dredged earth of heaven, black moon-slivers
in shades of hair. And I wonder, in this un-day of your leaving, why all
you send me is a bird? Hungry, wing-fluttered, jawing for a song.
—previously appeared on Verse Daily