“Skunk Cabbage” — C.Birde, 3/20
“Thank you,”
she spoke from half-light,
seen,
not seen,
“for all the small,
odd,
curious things —
the skunk cabbage,
the owl pellet,
the brittle lace
of shed snake’s skin,”
a breath,
a pause,
“for I am small &
odd &
curious,
too.“
— C.Birde, 3/20
“Owl Pellet” — C.Birde, 3/20
“Exposed” — C.Birde, 3/20
What shape
will healing take
and when might
the wound
reknit?
Reinforced with
steel & stone
Shattered glass
Crackâd bone
O,
nest of moss &
neatly woven
grasses
exposed to hope
to love again,
receive
us.
— C.Birde, 3/20
“Harbinger” — C.Birde, 3/20
From
the crown of trees
they call,
their voices
fall
like rain,
dark gems agleam,
aglitter;
rough-cut shards
against
up-tilted ear.
Rasp-
throated, darkling
harbingers
joined
in coarse prelude
to spring.
— C.Birde, 3/20
“Crocus Slope” — C.Birde, 3/20
“You will know me –“
hers was a murmur
to warm
winter’s bones —
“by the garment
I wear —
of snowdrops &
crocus;
by the buds
in my
hair.”
— C.Birde, 3/20
“Crocus” — C.Birde, 3/20
“Route 75 Traffic” — C.Birde, 2/20
Traffic bisected
the grassland’s
patchwork
in ceaseless tide.
“Only humans,”
she observed,
“will admire
a thing
to its
utter
unmaking.”
— C.Birde, 2/20
“Light Shaft (Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary)” — C.Birde, 2/20
“Cipher” — C.Birde, 2/20
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
“One” — C.Birde, 2/20
“Souldier” — C.Birde, 1/20
“I feel the grief
in my body,”
she said,
“a weight of tears
unshed,
to be shed.”
So Dawn draped her;
Moon crowned her;
& Foxfire
crept into her heart,
so she might
souldier on
— in light —
through the dark.
— C.Birde, 1/20
