bones full of empty
where the shot bird leaves its ashen song.
Night is a damply rotten blindfold
where the goblin-mother
stitches madness into nightmares.
I pay the wind to betray glass riders
who place black plumes
on the panicked heads of their Arab stallions.
I call for my blue sister who fell unborn
from the goblin-mother
in disguise of oleander and moonflower.
I paint my tongue haint blue
and call her here
to grow vines of sibling song,
In threads of peace, protection,
and soft dawn light
braided on the morning glory bloom.
___________
For Sunday Muse #91, where I am hosting.
This is like a hymn or song for what is truly real and truly lost to the heart. I so love every line Shay, but especially the whole second stanza! As always I am blown away by how you poetically say what no one else could have.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, Carrie. My mother lost what would have been my older sister to a miscarriage. I have often thought of her.
ReplyDeleteI am so sorry Shay. That is a great loss and the wonder if what could have been must be a true heart ache. 💙
DeleteI understand the idea of growing vines of sibling song. As one who has no bio sibling I have always wondered what another child with my parents' genes might have been like...I used to imagine....
ReplyDelete"Bones full of empty, where the shot bird leaves its ashen song." Such glorious lines! The goblin-mother stitching nightmares is a nice touch. I can SEE her! Ah, I can see that shadow-sister, lost before you, in whose shadow you grew up. Her disguise of oleander and moonflower is so beautiful. A fantastic poem to read and envision.
ReplyDeleteI too had a sister, Susan, who had blond hair and blue eyes. Her photo on my parent's dresser - I thought was me for the longest time! I was about 5 when I learned about her. I don't look like my other siblings at all - and everyone in the family has brown hair. Anyway, you are a master of describing things - painting a picture, not just blurting it out. Your poetry is best reread 2 or 3 times as the layers unfold beautifully.
ReplyDeleteLove how emptiness, loss, pain and assurance in the end are all stitched together to make a whole as life is. Beautiful.
ReplyDeleteGothic Southern here, yowza, ratcheted high on a cross beamed by Terror and Faith. No wonder the settlers stared into the wilderness and oncoming night with dread. Post that tree betwixt.
ReplyDeleteYou have no idea how hard this poem hit me, Shay. I was reading Lorca into the wee hours last night, and this perfectly traps some of his ghosts in your bottles as well, from the perfect brevity of the beginning stanzas to the deft embroidered edges of the rest. The fright and death you begin with slowly becomes annulled by the beauty of flowers and life itself as the poem progresses, and in the end leaves a light fragrance of hope, love, persistence of the beautiful, under the song of the shot bird. One of your very best, and I don't ever say that lightly, because your best is a high high bar.
ReplyDeleteThe sister lost to miscarriage - how sad this is. One has to wonder if she lives on on another plain of existence or only trapped in one of those glass bottles. I feel for all the lost ones - the eggs broken in nests, the fledgelings slow starving to death in their nest after the death of their mother, the bulbs that never sprout and bloom. But yet the seems to be hope at the end, and fragrance and light.
ReplyDeleteDeath brings its fear and hope brings its flowers. This is such an incredibly crafted poem of grief. I wonder about the bits and pieces of our loved ones that linger and visit on the wind.
ReplyDeleteWhat power of protection that would be--to create it by reaching for the arms of our siblings across the border of death! Together "to grow vines of sibling song" and calm "the panicked heads of their Arab stallions" (and other fires) and make homes for birds instead of glass! A powerful call.
ReplyDelete"vines of sibling songs" is such a powerful line. My parents had a baby before me, a little boy born with one lung. He only lived a week. My sister and I always imagine what it would have been like to have an older brother.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful language, Shay, as always.
Wow! This is so gripping, start to finish! The glass bones and blue tongue moments are riveting.
ReplyDeleteSo many exquisite word couplings ... beyond beautiful! Sigh, sigh. And your new Blog Design is awesome!
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