from the Kenyon Review, New Series, Spring 1991, Vol. XIII, No. 2
. . . is the thing with feathers—
Dickinson
Too much torque on a wing, and the branches
of the box elder, honeysuckle vines,
disappear. Each smack, when panic bounces
the bird off concrete blocks, ups its chances
of next time sailing back through a broken
window that my husband never fixes,
although I’ve asked him to time and again.
He finds them on the smokehouse floor, senseless.
I was in the bedroom, trying to mate
dark socks, when he offered me the redbird
like a wrong-shaped valentine. With it lying
left side down on his palm, still breathing
but staring elsewhere, I couldn’t avoid,
in that black, the eye’s minute point of light.
