THE SHOCK of it.

A mother telling her son: “My son, I won’t let you go to California.”

A young man carries her baby all day long in slings telling him to grow.

Music is ringing into an empty silent room
: a woman lost to grief; and a boy unable to place her
and then her voice and him singing a hard melody, so darkly ironic.

A little singing voice sounds in the distance about a fist coming down hard
on her right breast which hurts beyond words —

: a shadow on the porch

a young woman
a single mother —
chasing blackbirds;
a ghost.

Damp gravel slush raining down on a wood tree, big as a house
covered with silk flowers.

A light touches its branches, fades:

“Ring-a-ling!
Ring-a-ling!”

Mama cries: “Can you make a fairy home out of this?”

“Yep,” I say —

“that’s what I do all day.”

burned bird: the bird must go

(She alone will turn my face to this flame)
bunch of very small black bodies: flocking, in a shadow
of magic, so small, they see their souls away across the ocean
within bird-wings is a full moon.

gone.

—

HUNTING BOY at the butcher

pink of his heels: she hands him

the armful of feathers

of a dead hawk’s nest,

“now,” she says,

“a nice plumy body and yellow bill.”

// :: 02.09.2022 :: \\