Thursday, May 07, 2009 @10:37 AM
miche doesnt know how to describe this poem, but it is rather hmmm...thought inducing. got it from goodreads' May newsletter. enjoy.
Jaybirds Feeding on Robinsby
Trish Lindsey Jaggers They are at it again. Momma
robin tears through the trees to save
what's left of her babies. One lies
twitching on the ground, its eye sock
etemptied by a jay. I can't bury it
until it's dead, and I can't kill it,so I sit by it
beneath the screaming nest in the sugar maple
as rain drops sizzle through hot leaves.
It's June, and it's supposed to be like this,
daylong heat frying up evening
thunderstorms. In the west, new cumulonimbus
stretch their gargoyle heads, growl long and low.
If it were dark, I could see lightning
ricochet from cloud to cloud. Thunderheads,
Daddy called them.
Four summers ago, a palm reader
told me that a man I love
is slipping away, a dandelion letting go of its seed,
the seed grasping the stalk in the west wind.
Daddy was afraid of leaving
for anywhere not close to home.
He always wanted to swimin the ocean, but I went first,
came back thanking him
for my life. Last time I dragged
myself home from the white edges of Georgia,
past the palm-reader's house just outside
of town, past the lily—pad-covered swamps, past tired cattails fuzzing out seeds,
he'd bought a van, "Next year
we all can go, and you can drive."
The reader said that I pass many but travel alone becauseI'm afraid of loss, of being left.
I closed my hand to this fool before she took
any more of my moneyor my palm.
The twitching stops. The rain runs
down my face, tugs free of my chin.
The earth is dry
beneath the bird. I triangle—fold it into one of his old hankies,
lift a corner just before the earth goes in.
I want to be sure.
The wedge of its beak is cold,
arrowed like the sharks' teeth
I found on San Fernandina beach.
He'll be dead four years this August.
Above me, in a high fork
of the sugar maple he planted
twenty-six years ago,the screaming has stopped.
Three years ago, we sold the van.
He'd parked it in the sugar maple's shadow,
the grass pale and stiff when we moved it.
Today I leave for Georgia.
In the west, the thunderheads shake
out their dark fur; the wind rakes
rain and leaves from the trees;
years of roots and worms and earth
steam from the ground.
I pat it down, make a cross
with rocks like we did when I was four.
"Why do jays do that?" I asked."It's their nature," he said.
All rain runs to the ocean.
I still taste salt
in the back of my throat.
I stand, drag my muddy hands across my jeans;
if I hurry, the storm will be behind me as I drive.
