Poem for the Black Bird

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.