These words, I whispered into the open door
of the hallowed, hollow tree:
“Open my eyes.
Sweeten my speech.
Soften my heart.
Gentle my hands.
Broaden my mind.
Strengthen my will.
Deepen my soul.
Remove my fear,
that I might better hear
your reply echo
throughout the elements
surrounding.”
And by “my”, I mean “our”;
and by “I”, I mean “we”.
— C.Birde, 10/20
“Gently, gently, gently.”
From Autumn’s house,
she called;
doors & windows
wide open flung.
“Your grasp –
so tight upon the latch –
restricts advancement
into
light.”
— C.Birde, 10/20
It’s not the same without you here.
I’m less inclined to sit and stare out
the open window
at the sweet-winged visitors amongst
bowed seedheads,
waiting for the words to find their way
through that oculus, transformed and
translated
upon the white page spread before my
fingertips.
I get up, instead, wander – shapeless,
aimless – into the kitchen and load
the dishwasher,
that dark and hungry box, like so many,
that must continually
be fed and filled with the mundane.
When I return, the empty chair remains.
Empty of –
you.
— C.Birde, 10/20
“You cannot pursue
that which is
beside you,
within you,
of you.”
She gentled each word
with a dose of sweet rain.
“You can only sit with it
& offer it
your whole
compassionate
heart.”
— C.Birde, 10/20
Together,
apart.
We sit beneath
& within
the cool blue-green shade
of the great spruce tree,
with coffee &
grief &
glee,
& we feed all who come –
chipmunk & squirrel,
tufted titmouse,
jay & red-belly.
Hearts brimming,
undone,
we feed all who come.
Apart,
together.
My sister
& me.
— C.Birde, 10/20
They stand — all four of them — in a line;
shoulder to shoulder;
on green-grass sward in fading sunlight;
facing me…
No instruments in hand –
neither mandolin nor fiddle nor cello;
no guitar, no bass, no banjo…
Empty hands clasped together before them,
they stand — all four of them — in a line;
shoulder to shoulder;
on a green-grass sward in fading sunlight;
facing me…
Or is it a photo?
An antique square snapshot,
grown milky with age,
colors evaporating into a wriggle-edged white border
that frames them,
those four young men?
The lighting is wrong, the shadows off…
A dark circle pools at their feet,
conforming to no fixed source, natural or otherwise,
while simultaneously,
their cast shadows stretch from them,
toward me,
so long and lean and solid,
surely,
I should feel the weight of their touch,
heavy as silence…
— C.Birde, 10/20
“Cherish me,
praise me,
revere me –
or not.
As you will.”
She filtered
light & dark,
wind & rain
as she spoke.
“I will shelter you,
regardless.”
— C.Birde, 9/20
When
earth trembles &
that mantle of unmown grass –
lush &
green &
threaded through
with a purple fringe of wild asters –
separates from the soil of its making
to heave itself up up upright
on hindquarters of loam;
When
that vaguely humanoid shape,
soft-rubbed of keen features,
lurches with thick arms raised & sifting soil
to grope with blind,
blunted,
outstretched hands
like some unfathomably old
newly born golem of earth;
and When,
in umber-and-green-and-purple tide,
the shaken sward returns abruptly
to the soft mud of its recent birth
as if it never was…
Will its voiceless,
mossy,
desperate
roar have penetrated?
or will that thrashing cry have been dismissed
as dream?
— C.Birde, 9/20
“Oh,
dear one,”
she soothed &
sighed &
rustled,
“do not conceal
your tears…
They connect you
to all the world’s
sorrows &
joys…”
— C.Birde, 9/20
“Show tenderness
toward the small,”
she advised
with sly sideways glance.
“For, ultimately,
you, too, are
small.”
— C.Birde, 9/20
