I.
Only the child’s shovel will do—
neon-green, simple
maple handle.
Behind barberry and cottonwood, I am private, tucking
the bird into snow, far
from the house
that killed it when it veered out of its orbit.
Later I’ll clean the shovel with yellow
fluid, smelling bright as nails.
II.
After the bird dropped with a thud,
I wanted to work my fingers through the freezing feathers,
coax the wings to fan out,
its thumb-sized heart too rapidly beating,
bleary eye half-open,
but there was no touching it.
At night, my child presses his cheek hard against mine,
his ribs against mine
till we’re doubly pulsing.
The wind’s a small unbidden sound,
not grieving.
III.
I could have waited for the fox to lick
the bird’s eye closed, nudge its weight from
my doorstep, then streak off,
carrying the bird in its mouth
over the fields
to where it belonged.
I could have studied the crenulations
of the bird’s underwing or sketched
with a charcoal stick its fine head. Or burned
the bird to a teaspoon of ash and scattered it
over the lake.
IV.
Once I could hold someone
else’s love so patiently,
distantly, you could hardly
tell it was me loving.
V.
I have cried I have not cried enough
I have ignored the compass
fractured the map with blindness
while the worms
died in the earth they kept making
I have cried I have not cried enough
I blanketed my child
before he could think to cover himself
I thinned myself as though I were a project
I blot out grief as snow does light
I pass through mirrors—
VI.
the last day of february and the barberry and snowbirds
and surveyors’ little orange and yellow flags flittering
my armor shiny bits of my helmet in pieces we are in pieces one
feathery piece of us dropped and I have been talking
so much god has vanished my words a little something to bring
to a party
VII.
Beautiful fractal—
bird with a blur for an eye, what did you
see before plummeting?—shadow wavering
at the threshold, glommed
by light.
Later—the shock
of snow you slid into
from my green shovel—the chilly
distances
between branches where you might have perched
and twitched. Under mulberry trees sacked in white ash,
how handsome in your death-suit,
sealed clean—
VIII.
In spring, it rains and rains
and the water rises
from the drainage ditch, carrying
pitch and froth and mud and melting
snow and sodden feather-sack,
the water spilling over
the bank, over the creeping things, the ivy,
snagging what it hauls itself over, dragging
the bulk toward my house…pulling everything
unburied
closer to me, circling my ankles, insistently lapping….
from Pretty TripwireFind more by Alessandra Lynch at the library
Copyright © 2021 Alessandra Lynch
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.