fly above a dry burning land--
they don't stop to rest in bare black trees--
lost birds come straight to your hand.
Lady gentle as the touch of death,
so beautiful, like a lost bird's song--
they sing, so sure you're their homeward star--
but they're wrong, those birds, lost and wrong.
Lost bird finds out when you stroke its wing--
lost bird lost Heaven, lost everything.
I've seen how you make fruit from flower
and leave a stem curling brown on the branch--
I've seen how you look at the ripening rows--
and the barbs on the fence where the night birds catch.
Lost birds come all the way from Mexico
caught in crosswinds east then south--
all just to bring you a Spanish song
from a lost bird's throat to your calico's mouth.
Lost birds lose whatever they bring--
lose sky, lose Heaven, lose everything.
______
for magpie #295.
What a song to put with this poem! And the birds innocently enter the jaws of death. Sneaky calico! The repetitions here lead me to the chasm, right after soft and gentle and beautiful. I feel the parallel of poem to life and wish it wasn't so.
ReplyDeleteThis is gorgeous, especially this section from the opening, "Lost birds, soft as smoke ... come straight to your hand," and the last two lines of the poem.
ReplyDeleteThe fourth and fifth stanzas are very interesting, engaging, and layered as well. I also appreciate the sensual undertones running throughout.
I think everyone feels like a "lost bird" who's lost "everything," from time to time. But feeling like you've lost Heaven would be a heavy sorrow to bear. I wonder if it's a true Heaven she's lost, or a perceived Heaven (on earth; love, perhaps). Lost/broken "ladies" do tend to land on any open hand promising safety and/or nourishment, often only to end up with a broken wing or neck when they hand (or jaw) closes around them. They should never forget their God-given ability to peck; only in hurting the hand that holds them will the lost birds escape unscathed.
haunting and beautiful.
ReplyDeleteIndeed haunting...well done
ReplyDeleteWoah!
ReplyDeleteEloquently Melancholy ....right on !
ReplyDeleteI had started to think about Amy Winehouse when reading about lost birds... and then you have that video... very apt.
ReplyDeleteDeep and irretrievable sadness here, the empty cup, the hope that is shattered like ice on a pond as you go down to drown. No one captures a mood like you do, Shay--every line of this, with its soft sad rhymes and fluttering cadence, tears at the heart.
ReplyDeleteI love your bird poetry, and I have to say that I think this is your very best, or at least my new favourite. It is everything a poem should be - a song of the heart, mind and soul.
ReplyDeleteSo much steel beneath the softness. The repetition is hypnotic.
ReplyDeleteWhoa.
ReplyDeleteJust...I can't even...
Gorgeous, superlative work, Shay.
lost but not despairing, there is a kind of natural destiny to this poem, no metaphor for hope but rather a statement of how somethings are created
ReplyDeletehave a nice Tuesday
much love...
Powerfully imaginative, holding.
ReplyDeleteWOW!!!! One of my favourites yet, and that is saying something. I love the rhythm of it, the rhyme, the lost bird's song - and that wonderful line about losing sky, Heaven and everything. What a gorgeous poem this is.
ReplyDeleteI would have liked to have heard Amy sing your song.
ReplyDeleteAmy was my hero, a modern female James Dean, Rebel.
..
So pretty, reads like a song to the calico's mouth. Really wonderful, Shay.
ReplyDeleteYour repetition really brings home the meaning in your poem!
ReplyDeleteThe fragility, the close examination, the near-rhyme, the dose of Amy Winehouse...
ReplyDeleteThanks for being Shay. (And by the way, with lots of other folks putting out their memoirs... Have you ever considered doing it?)
This is heartbreaking, but so beautiful.
ReplyDeleteExquisite and heart-breaking. Loved this, la la Mosk - ps Happy Thanksgiving
ReplyDelete