In May’s unclouded light,
I walked my grief –
short leash heart-tethered
Cool blue breath against
my skin reverberating
with our paired gait’s
catch & swing
Strides synchronized
etched from fragrant air
Each, a pulse of beauty,
a tear shed for my own,
for the world’s suffering
Heart-leash short tethered
wending home again
On my doorstep –
patient, casting shadow
Nowhere to go, I let it in.
— C.Birde, 5/24
Farewell
to green-fringed
sheltering limbs…
The hole hewn
from the gray sky,
where you stood
a hundred years,
cannot contain
your absence.
— C.Birde, 5/23
Run, run, run
run free,
unfettered by mortality’s
pale restraints as,
when first we met,
you ran,
Electron made flesh
in four fleet paws that,
for seventeen years,
obliged earth’s gravity
in jovial orbit.
Run, run, run
run free with yip &
click & jingle, & leave us,
dear Josie,
to the heartbreak
& surreality of your
departure.
— C.Birde, 10/22
Sleep interrupted
by strobe of lights –
red & blue & white
stroked in rotation
of flashes against
the ceiling …
Rise & slip
across the floor,
part the drapes,
& kneel –
forehead to glass –
at the window…
Peer out & down,
absorb the scene
below…
Police & fire &
emergency trucks
cluster in the rain-
flooded street…
People mill & study
their handiwork…
The dogwood –
stretched prone –
lies on wet grass,
a graceless knot
of limbs pricked
in pink blooms…
Twenty-six years
of growth,
cut down…
All that remains,
a ragged stump
in broken light
& rain.
— C.Birde, 5/22
A year
has passed
since you left
this earth
& though
I miss you now
no more than
yesterday
& no less than
tomorrow,
today I’m
pricked
with
t
e
a
r
s
.
.
.
— C.Birde, 2/21
Lodged
between the ribs
So near the heart’s
sweet beating
Ember
of doubt and fear
Smoldering
Compressed &
prone to flare
at least provocation
Legacy of grief
Invisible
Unseen
Forged so long ago
Catching at all
kindling
Acknowledge it
Smother it
Cover it or
cut it out
It won’t be doused
Ever raw
Lodged & always
burning.
— C.Birde, 2/21
Keep at the chase,
the resplendent lights
and roar
of externalized joy
slipping –
annually,
perennially –
through grasping
fingers…
Or…
Make a friend of sorrow
Shake its hand,
learn its curves
and contours,
its bruise-blue depth
and hue
Feel its familiar weight
softly brushed
against the shoulders’
curl
There is no shame here,
in acquaintance
of this humble keeper
of memory –
only an open door
to self-knowing,
a lifetime
of understanding,
recognized.
— C.Birde, 1/21
“Oh,
dear one,”
she soothed &
sighed &
rustled,
“do not conceal
your tears…
They connect you
to all the world’s
sorrows &
joys…”
— C.Birde, 9/20
Firm as fact.
Sweet as certainty.
My knife parts velvet skin,
slices through yielding flesh
to bite the channeled stone within.
Each taste, ripe and real.
Triumph over falsehood.
Antitoxin to hate.
Each taste, a tonic to these days
of discord.
Burden me –
O please, I beg you –
burden me with the blessing
of Summer’s remaining peaches,
and I may indeed survive…
My grief
is a mourning dove,
all hollow bones &
feathers.
Winged.
Near-weightless.
Poor tender, disconsolate
creature.
She curls talons against
her perch –
my heart –
pierces that soft muscled
chamber &
coos a mournful
song.
— C.Birde, 8/20