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Bird-Understander

Craig Arnold

Of many reasons I love you here is one

the way you write me from the gate at the airport

so I can tell you everything will be alright

so you can tell me there is a bird

trapped in the terminal      all the people

ignoring it       because they do not know

what to do with it       except to leave it alone

until it scares itself to death

it makes you terribly terribly sad

You wish you could take the bird outside

and set it free or       (failing that)

call a bird-understander

to come help the bird

All you can do is notice the bird

and feel for the bird       and write

to tell me how language feels

impossibly useless

but you are wrong

You are a bird-understander

better than I could ever be

who make so many noises

and call them song

These are your own words

your way of noticing

and saying plainly

of not turning away

from hurt

you have offered them

to me       I am only

giving them back

if only I could show you

how very useless

they are not

The Heart Under Your Heart

Who gives his heart away too easily must have a heart
under his heart.
—James Richardson 

The heart under your heart
is not the one you share
so readily so full of pleasantry
& tenderness
it is a single blackberry
at the heart of a bramble
or else some larger fruit
heavy the size of a fist
it is full of things
you have never shared with me
broken engagements bruises
& baking dishes
the scars on top of scars
of sixteen thousand pinpricks
the melody you want so much to carry
& always fear black fear
or so I imagine you have never shown me
& how could I expect you to
I also have a heart beneath my heart
perhaps you have seen or guessed
it is a beach at night
where the waves lap & the wind hisses
over a bank of thin
translucent orange & yellow jingle shells
on the far side of the harbor
the lighthouse beacon
shivers across the black water
& someone stands there waiting

Craig Arnold

Sheep

It is the work of feeling

to undo expectation.

A black-faced sheep

looks back at you as you pass

and your heart is startled

as if by the shadow

of someone once loved.

Neither comforted by this

nor made lonely.

Only remembering

that a self in exile is still a self,

as a bell unstruck for years

is still a bell.

Jane Hirshfield

The Intake Questionnaire for the Pain Clinic Ask if Pain Has Prevented Me From Having a Fulfilling Life

All year the line between inside

and out has been hard to cross

but spring opens the gate.

I hear the sun calling. I hear

the magnolia tree down the block

calling. I go to the tree. I go

to the grocery store for coconut

I Left My House Today ice cream.

I think I see an ex waiting

in the line outside when I leave

but she has a mask on and last

I heard lived in another city.

I don’t want her to see me

because I don’t want to go back

to being the person I was

when she loved me. I want

to keep who I am now

despite my deep exhaustion.

Time reinvents itself so often

I forget I’ve always lived

in this body, on this planet. Inside,

I fantasize about going back

to the patio chairs in the middle

of the still-sunlit street and calling

Libby, but after climbing the stairs

to our apartment’s front door

I need the couch to hold me up.

I’m so used to shedding

my ambitions that it almost looks

graceful when I do it now. In all

my daydreams I have the energy

to call my friends. Rest my body

in a river of their voices.

Kyla Jamieson

Wolf Moon 

Hold on, they said, but she was tiny and let
the kite go flying above tears and treetops.
The kite had a will of its own, and its will
was wind which carried it the way love carries
surrender and forgiveness. I was right behind
and watched until hope was a speck and gone.
I’d have let it swoop me up the way a bird
of prey lifts a rabbit or a mouse, not afraid
to rub my nose in sky and roll about in deep
fields of snow far above cirrostratus.
Not afraid to let bliss devour me whole.
Or grief, if I must live my forever in orbit
with the Wolf Moon as it prowls night
after night howling for the wilderness we lost.

Susan Mitchell

Sunrise

You can

die for it–

an idea,

or the world. People

have done so,

brilliantly,

letting

their small bodies be bound

to the stake,

creating

an unforgettable

fury of light. But

this morning,

climbing the familiar hills

in the familiar

fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,

and India

and Europe, and I thought

how the sun

blazes

for everyone just

so joyfully

as it rises

under the lashes

of my own eyes, and I thought

I am so many!

What is my name?

What is the name

of the deep breath I would take

over and over

for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is

happiness, it is another one

of the ways to enter

fire.

Mary Oliver