written By
The sky above my bed
is nine feet high and in moments of wonder,
I stand with my feet cratered on the bed
and I can palm the plastered clouds, the mini T-rex. Is this
what dreams are made of?
For nine weeks, I have laid here in hours of three,
in hopes that these hours might seal what my spine’s dura feels:
bruised beyond these words by a drunk driver.
At night, my husband reads the biographies of saints,
and we question how they held on.
For it has taken nine weeks, yet one afternoon, I see it:
the robin’s robust body takes flight. Or
does its claws grip the ground? And
have I glimpsed its attempt? Now I see another,
a mourning dove, struggling mid-flight.
The ceiling clouds obscure its body. Or
is the obscurity its color
too light to see? When I was nine,
I found a robin’s blue freckled egg,
its backside dented, that had fallen from the juniper tree
outside my bedroom window.
I knew of death in animals.
I knew its mama would reject the egg,
just like the stray mama cats would reject the kittens in the milk barn
birthed on the gunny sacks that smelled of my hands.
And now I wonder: How
do the robin and mourning dove endure
the winds? How
does the fledgling, then its wings—how
can they rest upon the invisible?
Now I see—
the robin’s attempt,
the mourning dove’s flight,
the clouds breaking—
they’ll fly away, some glad morning.
