We rode the air
on dark wings
glittering —
a hundred pair
(Once, we numbered
thousands)
tried,
with each beating
stroke
and the rust
of our throats
(“O, hear us,
O, listen…”)
We skirled
and soughed through
the bone-bare trees
and cried in a voice of
calamity:
“Beware!
Our cipher,
our patterns, heed.
Beware!”
Your heads
never
lifted.
— C.Birde, 2/20
We write
our message
in undulating script,
in swoops & swirls,
in disappearing
ink.
Look up.
Lookfeelhear.
Decipher our plumed
& urgent patterns.
Lookfeelhear
our passage.
Mark our departure
& our absence.
Our pennate cycles
intersect & weave
as
o n e.
— C.Birde, 11/19
How
to clasp joy
in this world
of aching
loss?
Of bees and birds
of breath
of birds and bees
of life
Exchange
your salt shaker for
wildflower seeds
Cast aside
your blind and grudging
stones
Create
a sacred space
for the fierce impossibility of
feather
flesh and
bone
Feed two birds
with clear eyes and
hopeful heart,
with one open,
widespread
palm.
— C.Birde, 11/19
Each year,
in out-sized voice,
he makes his
declaration;
small, bold auctioneer
rapidly proclaiming
his fine qualities
and wares –
twig-and-stick
nest sites
of considerable
envy.
Yet,
when the song
has threaded through
privet and azalea,
when negotiations
are exchanged,
decisions made
and settled —
despite my hopes,
my efforts to
accommodate —
another site is —
doubtlessly,
regrettably —
selected.
— C.Birde, 5/19
Returned
– at last –
that sweet-voiced
family.
Descendants.,
all.
Clad in morning
coats and caps,
feathered gray.
Now,
I will put away
– at last –
winter’s bleak
attire,
remove my heart
from safeguarded
place,
return it
– at last –
to its nestspace
betwixt my ribs.
At last.
— C.Birde, 5/19
Open the door.
Step outside.
Underfoot,
limestone and
concrete,
cool, gritty.
Look left,
past the railing;
a crow sails –
wings fanned –
from the great
Norway spruce.
Down
down
down.
Black feathers
finger,
catch,
disperse,
and
scatter light.
Wings serve
as rudder and
brakes;
he curls through
the air and
lands
on the bottom-
most step.
Arrived, he waits –
wings folded,
body
contracted,
compacted,
prepared
to
launch
for safety.
Dark eyes aglitter
beneath corvid
brow;
wedge
of soot-black bill
lifts.
Crow – guide;
harbinger;
messenger;
omens
safely tucked
underwing.
Where have you
been?
For years,
you called me
to this very
door;
I fed you;
watched you
strut
about the green-
grass yard,
unafraid.
Five years
absent;
the duration
of his
passing.
I hear your
call.
Deliver
your message –
I am
ready.
— C.Birde, 5/19
Remember
when we stood beneath
the great spruce,
faces tilted upward,
hands lifted to catch
their rough laughter
as it fell –
heavy as pinecones,
bright as crescents of
moonlight –
from those vast,
outstretched limbs?
Six years gone,
the tree cradles silence;
the absence echoes
forward.
We wait below;
patient;
hands
empty.
— C.Birde, 1/19
Scatter seed —
feed the small souls
scratching for survival
through dreams of
warmer days and
last season’s
leaf litter.
Scatter the seeds
of kindness.
Harvest songs
of
love.
— C.Birde, 12/18
Four white bodies,
whiter
than Autumn snow;
sleek and blemishless
and smooth
as the far horizon;
extending,
reaching,
stretching,
and –
with each near-silent,
muscular stroke –
beating
brisk air
to cream.
— C.Birde, 11/18
Two weeks ago, three weeks early, he said goodbye.
A day after the incident –
Pale streak of feathers with talons, outstretched and efficient
Tangle of cries and silence caught within deer netting and ripening tomatoes
The scene unfolding beyond the bay windows, as, unwilling, I observed and thought (disjointedly) of Casablanca, the words re-working in my head
“Of all the birds, in all the yards, in all the world – the hawk has taken mine”
As I thought (unkindly), while running from the house in futile effort, of the multitude of House Sparrows whose numbers could bear thinning, my cries of negation to stop, avert, reverse the course of events and pluck those yellow claws from that small gray breast and separate the two – Little hawk (Sharp Shinned? Coopers? he will not tell me) from Gray Catbird – to unwind time and heal the wound…
Above me, despite me, beyond my reach and will and pleas, Little hawk wheeled away with his prize – young parent to this year’s only fledgling.
The burning bush, previously a-shiver with activity, is still.
The pergola, with its unrestrained clematis vines, remains empty.
The container of raisins sits on the counter, untouched, unshared.
Two weeks ago, three weeks early, he said goodbye —
my small avian friend of untold years —
A day after the incident.
Next year, next spring — so far off —
will reveal if he’ll return
again.
— C.Birde, 9/18
