by Diane LeBlanc

A Poem Without Birds

A mockery of green. Grass mold and mud. Two white crocuses for a single morning lit. Too late to claim palm branches last Sunday, we closed the fingers of one hand around the fingers of the other, flesh for the blessing. New fonts echo old wars. Someone said, write a poem without birds. Splintered fence posts wintered over. Storm clouds coo. I press torn wings between pages. Now the story grafts to hollow bones. The lightness of forgetting. The inconvenience of feathers. Toe tags and tariffs. All the while, the problem of my grandmother’s dishes. By that I mean the worldly things I can give away but never escape.  The comfort of chipped edges. The glazed and flowered past I find on Goodwill shelves unsold. The first rule of genealogy is to start with who you know and move back in time. Toward the end, my teacher kept herself warm under lights she hung from her family tree. Myth was her beloved bat. She grew crocuses in Wyoming clay. Patience with theory, soup, and poor soil. Her mind a rooted bulb. Her body a wrecked stem. Afternoons written in iron gall ink grow dark. Next year I’ll have nothing to offer for ashes.