We Lived

We lived in houses on stilts.

The tides ran beneath us.

We who did not follow rules of a church

were called The Lost Ones.

I was one of these.

Like witches they believed we could turn

ourselves to animals, beings with wings.

I went to their house of worship.

What did I see but humans with wings?

As for us, how true what they believed.

We Lost Ones love the birds.

We know their songs

and nurse the orphans back to flight.

The birds also love the tides that pass beneath us

each day, and once in the sea-dark night

we shared the same dream,

keeping watch on one another.

Here is the garden of birds, green parrots, the red,

the golden leaf-cutter on branches

not yet full-grown after the tree cutters came through.

And here’s the turkey all the colors of metal

and those small father birds who remain on the eggs

until he hears the new lives talking inside

as the mother bird carries in their food.

At night we call the birds home.

They know the call and arrive in a breeze of wings

from the forests or mangrove swamps.

They arrive so pure, so clean, having bathed

and preened, ready to journey.

If the tides forget to pass beneath our home

at a given time,

we forgive the waters for changing.

At least the flying brown bats still pass by

with their gentle faces

and bodies stretched out in flight.

They still have the faith of years with soft heartbeats

and recall the history of people

who crossed the edge of time

between animal, human, and hunger

clinging above the wet earth.

They know we sing

to call home the birds,

we Lost Ones who see both ways,

one and the other.