"And finches, / cardinals, away from heaven, / as black seeds slide down their throats." Courtesy of Tony Alter/flickr CC BY 2.0.
Today, no song, God, repentance
ringing as words flute up through rafters.
What remains: a bird feeder heavy
with seed, like a soon-to-be
mother swaying. And finches,
cardinals, away from heaven,
as black seeds slide down their throats.
Nothing survives
this world without faith,
without rising out of oneself
into the dream of shared need.
It’s because I’m done kneeling
that I walk beneath the sky’s blue
vein as the pulse of my own
sadness widens there, until at last
it is enough to cut open
a bag of seed and drift. Please grant
me peace of mind and calm
my troubled heart. And what I mean is wings.
I mean singing and for small bodies
to shadow the yard. Funny, I can imagine
them falling through the temple
of silence, early morning burning
orange along the lip of the horizon.
I can imagine their bones
in some distant season, sticking out,
broken by a window.
I trust your Love, God. The wind
through their feathers, feathers
that shimmer in such severe light
for April, feathers just outside
my baby girl’s room,
the whole world
stunned with heat, raw.