Wide awake,
in fully-present,
part-suspended state,
I dreamt of you –
from yesterday;
and thirty years ago.
From the many days
between.
Those images –
edges eased,
contours softened –
aligned,
one upon another.
Years —
meaningless;
momentous;
manifest.
Your smile,
your laugh –
so dear to me –
remain
unchanged.
— C.Birde
Already, it had begun. The shaming.
Beyond the plate-glass doors, in dim half-light, sheets of paper lay strewn about the floor – slim sheaves spread in a white drift over flecked linoleum.
The woman placed her hand on the door’s bar – a leather-softened grip fastened over a horizontal tube of buffed aluminum. Depressing the handle, she entered. Pale light flashed and lanced off the door’s glass. Once inside, she paused, adjusted netted top hat over the knot of her hair, tugged velvet jacket into place over her ribs so brass buttons aligned spine-straight. When she broke, once more, into movement, tiers of crisp taffeta shushed about her legs. The clip and snick of her boot heels echoed, their insistence blunted by the path of paper underfoot. Each thin leaf she trod held, trapped within its rectangle, a black-and-white headshot of the shaming victim. Unwavering, the woman followed that paper trail.
Shush, snick – heel spitting cheek. Shush, snick – toe blacking eye.
When the entry hall widened, the woman halted her march, reached behind herself to lift and agitate her skirt’s bustle. The action loosed an additional sheaf of papers — they drifted free, curled in the air and settled gently to the floor behind her. These, too, held black-and-white headshots, trimmed of excess paper about the victim’s tumbled hair and shoulders.
Unsmiling, the woman continued down the hall.
Shush, snick – heel against throat. Shush, snick – toe filling mouth.
— C.Birde, 11/17
A drape
of fog conceals
our wounds,
our scars;
Keeps our secrets
s a f e,
hides our small
and honest
shames.
— C.Birde, 11/17
Autumn, looking up in Greenwood Cemetery, Boonton, as the trees shift color beneath the sun’s eye.
Continue reading
This eve
the veil between
the worlds grows thin — night jars
and damsel flies hearthside and safe
again.
— C.Birde, 10/17
Side by side that night, we slept and dreamed our separate dreams.
Or so it seemed.
I, in a derelict house that leaned within its footings, climbed a crooked staircase through a murk of dark. Hand trailing the banister’s time-gnawed and pitted wood, I reached the slanted landing and moved, as if down a throat, through railroaded rooms that lead one into another. Faded carpets underfoot, their colored patterns lost to time and wear. The house felt empty – of soul and memory – and the walls held little on their broken plaster planes beyond strips and tears of antique floral papers. Three windows in that final claustrophobic room held only night – far darker for its starless aspect – and here, carpet and floorboards both peeled and fell away to reveal a swollen bulge beneath. The sides sloped gently upward to a hole defined by the floorboards’ split and broken edges, and from this broke-toothed fissure emerged a skittering, chittering fury of insects. Mandibled and multi-legged, their pale, foot-long, segmented bodies writhed in and out of that misplaced hole in chaotic, threatening fashion. Near at hand, I found a smooth, stout branch and thrust its gnarled end into that revolting hive. I heard the crunch and squish of squashed, insectoid bodies, felt my stomach heave. But the swarm did not decrease. I knew I’d earned the creatures’ wrath when, with relief, I woke.
Unbeknownst to me, he, too, in his sleep dreamed. Of a house, filled less with dark than light, its angles meeting square and right. And he – downstairs, not up – perceived in the sweep of ceiling overhead a bulge in that smooth space, seemingly benign. A squat stalactite of sloped sides, its peak crowned in a dark, hollow depression from which moved to and fro a collective of insects, sleek bodied with wings of pale and iridescent green pressed to the subtle gleam of their hardened carapaces. Though he craned his neck to discern the meaning of their movements, he felt no threat, but curiosity.
Side by side that night, we slept and dreamed our separate dreams.
Or so it seemed.
— C.Birde, 10/17
Crowned in light,
sun-polished —
Hickory,
Autumn’s broad-leafed
beacon.
— C.Birde, 10/17
Drift and
curl of light and
leaf in rose-water hues
flatter any who fall beneath
their spell.
— C.Birde, 10/17
Stretched
to catch inclined light
in half-leafed limbs —
Tree hugs sky.
— C.Birde, 10/17
Hearbeat
in cupped hands,
rapid as thought,
as flight.
Curl and prick
of yellow toes
against my palm.
An insubstantial weight,
scant as warbled light.
Years unravel,
molt,
a drift of feathers –
yellow, olive, white.
Unclasp my fingers’
cage and —
like a dream,
a song —
my heart has gone,
the bird has flown.
My hands’ hollow
refills with stirred air
and a moment
passed.
Overwhelmed,
I stand –
a-weep,
a-stir,
a-flutter.
Newly fledged,
remade
in
delight.
— C.Birde, 10/17