by Gerald Friedman
Old Birds
When the oil wells of Persia burned I did not weep
until I heard about the birds…covered in tar.
-Lucia Perillo, “The Second Slaughter”
The night my mother died I dreamed of houses floating—
floors drifting into walls table lamps ascending into swans.
The chamomile wind fluttered in the garden where cranes were feeding.
It was a dream of wings lifting
& this morning I want to lay daisies at the feet of all the birds
who were still beautiful when they died:
the Eskimo curlew, the Christmas sandpiper, the Bermuda night heron.
My neighbor is building bird houses & he cannot build
them fast enough for the wrens & the yellow finches
whose eager homesteading is a whirlwind of grasses & thatches.
When I hear the morning bird chatter, like Beethoven I try to fill
the chords with harmony, creating all the notes I cannot hear
because so many birds whickering their warm regards are missing now.
We live every day a rehearsal for extinction but today
I give gratitude to be living in the days of the birds still
the fruit dove, the snowy owl, the great blue-billed curassow.
Stephanie K. Merrill is a retired high school English teacher. Her poems have been published in The Rise Up Review, Feral, UCity Review, Moist Poetry Journal, Amethyst Review, One Art, Anti-Heroin Chic, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. Stephanie K. Merrill is a Pushcart Prize nominee. She lives in Austin, Texas. @StephanieKMerrill@zirk.us.
Gerald Friedman grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, and now teaches physics and math in northern New Mexico. He has published poetry in various journals, and photography in the Santa Fe Literary Review as well as Feral. You can see more of his work at https://jerryfriedman.wixsite.com/my-site-2.