Run, run, run
run free,
unfettered by mortality’s
pale restraints as,
when first we met,
you ran,
Electron made flesh
in four fleet paws that,
for seventeen years,
obliged earth’s gravity
in jovial orbit.
Run, run, run
run free with yip &
click & jingle, & leave us,
dear Josie,
to the heartbreak
& surreality of your
departure.
— C.Birde, 10/22
Sleep interrupted
by strobe of lights –
red & blue & white
stroked in rotation
of flashes against
the ceiling …
Rise & slip
across the floor,
part the drapes,
& kneel –
forehead to glass –
at the window…
Peer out & down,
absorb the scene
below…
Police & fire &
emergency trucks
cluster in the rain-
flooded street…
People mill & study
their handiwork…
The dogwood –
stretched prone –
lies on wet grass,
a graceless knot
of limbs pricked
in pink blooms…
Twenty-six years
of growth,
cut down…
All that remains,
a ragged stump
in broken light
& rain.
— C.Birde, 5/22
A year
has passed
since you left
this earth
& though
I miss you now
no more than
yesterday
& no less than
tomorrow,
today I’m
pricked
with
t
e
a
r
s
.
.
.
— C.Birde, 2/21
Lodged
between the ribs
So near the heart’s
sweet beating
Ember
of doubt and fear
Smoldering
Compressed &
prone to flare
at least provocation
Legacy of grief
Invisible
Unseen
Forged so long ago
Catching at all
kindling
Acknowledge it
Smother it
Cover it or
cut it out
It won’t be doused
Ever raw
Lodged & always
burning.
— C.Birde, 2/21
Keep at the chase,
the resplendent lights
and roar
of externalized joy
slipping –
annually,
perennially –
through grasping
fingers…
Or…
Make a friend of sorrow
Shake its hand,
learn its curves
and contours,
its bruise-blue depth
and hue
Feel its familiar weight
softly brushed
against the shoulders’
curl
There is no shame here,
in acquaintance
of this humble keeper
of memory –
only an open door
to self-knowing,
a lifetime
of understanding,
recognized.
— C.Birde, 1/21
I feel it…
the slow creep
of oblique melancholia
that seeps beneath
the skin
as daylight slips,
eclipsed by dark.
Hours dim and dwindle,
smudged from each day’s
steady transit.
Hoarded light reclines
toward torpor,
awaits eventual
rebirth,
while in the interim,
I feel –
oh so keenly –
its very
dearth.
— C.Birde, 12/20
“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
Firm as fact.
Sweet as certainty.
My knife parts velvet skin,
slices through yielding flesh
to bite the channeled stone within.
Each taste, ripe and real.
Triumph over falsehood.
Antitoxin to hate.
Each taste, a tonic to these days
of discord.
Burden me –
O please, I beg you –
burden me with the blessing
of Summer’s remaining peaches,
and I may indeed survive…
My grief
is a mourning dove,
all hollow bones &
feathers.
Winged.
Near-weightless.
Poor tender, disconsolate
creature.
She curls talons against
her perch –
my heart –
pierces that soft muscled
chamber &
coos a mournful
song.
— C.Birde, 8/20
“Nightstand” — C.Birde, 4/20
Ask
something concrete…
What books I’ve accumulated,
over the past five weeks –
eight, thus far:
three new; five used;
two classics;
one not yet received.
(Ask
for an illustrative
Venn Diagram.)
Ask
if the stack on the nightstand
leans –
those Dead Girls & Cousins
& Innkeepers & Unicorns;
the modern-day Persephone;
the House of Tremontaine
& Castle Gormenghast
all listing crookedly,
patiently,
waiting for Wintering.
Ask
how much I read –
two paragraphs each night,
maybe three
(the stack could last indefinitely);
a comfort of words,
in self-prescribed doses.
Ask
the tangible, the specific;
I’ll answer eagerly,
each query a forbidden fruit –
tart, acidic, honey-sweet.
But please –
oh, please –
avoid the vague,
the nebulous,
the hazy;
do not disrupt
this tenuous balance;
do not ask me
how I
am.
— C.Birde, 4/20
Nightjars & Damselflies 