Baby bird

Baby bird
On the sidewalk;
Gone so young, never feathered;
Once encased, never fettered—
Through your intercession:

Let my death be like yours—in a whisper;
To a hymn sung by mi familia;
For my tomb the whole world.

And let them sing unto new millennia:
Those who flew that I may try to fly, who
Landed that I may find ground.
Let them sing, then let them whisper;
But let them not be drowned out.

To the birds

And to the birds still on wing,
Can it be that your song is always a cry?
Always a yearning, always in earnest?
I choose to think
That you sing from time to time just because you are 
happy.
And that sometimes you fly
just because you like flying—
dipping and weaving,
Letting the wind blow you off your path,
then rebutting its objection, and enjoying the dance.
I choose to think
That you bob on the breeze for the thrill—
the almost-falling, the catching yourself by your wings.

Let my feeder be where you land. 
Let it be a place where you eat your fill;
and then more than your fill, for the taste.
A place where you find seed, never rocks,
evermore.

This duo of poems is an ode to my grandmother. She loved birds, and she was very knowledgable about them. According to my grandfather, she used to spend hours picking rocks out of the bird feed, a quiet labor of great love.

In her last days, when her health was failing due to Parkinson’s disease, she saw a baby bird dead on the sidewalk while she was walking with my father. She paused to say a prayer over the bird.

In the days after her death, I was out for a walk myself and came across a baby bird dead on the sidewalk. I paused to say my own prayer. These poems are the result of that contemplation.

Thanks for reading! Consider subscribing for more, or checking out my book of poetry and philosophy.