Poem for the Black Bird
After Matthew Zapruder
Today I wept with the kids as we drove
the dirt roads, grass greener than ever. I felt it
closed. The meadows smothered dozing cows in clover
and violet. A certain valence. It came so close
to something nameless. I needed the omnivorous
metaphor, a golden omen. I needed to touch
its extreme beak with my mind, to know
it existed. That afternoon decades ago
when my mom went to Wal-Mart, the red poppies
ran across her skirt, her eyes bluer than melting glaciers.
She emerged with a bag, no explanation. And I drove
us back to the house my dad won by divorcing.
I don’t remember how night descended, whether feathered
or furred, no poem-bird could hold it. Mom went inside
first. I stood near the pine and lied to love, lied to its face. I felt it
closed. And there was Mom, in the window,
unwrapping her purchase. She set a chair near the socket,
plugged in her pen. I watched her blaze the pine-panel walls
with a wood-burner. It wound round the rim of the room
and grew rounder, the part I didn’t see coming.
You will never forget me, Doru. No one else left
their homeland for you. Her hands shook, pressing
words into the flesh of our home. The life she was
leaving. Her notes, that winding charred necklace,
encircling us. The bird was not black.
It was the color of fire absent smoke.
I can’t forget what it spoke.
