It was a year that broke open every bird,
killed the sky with loneliness
and choked every throat with the smoke of its own songs, burning.
It was the year my son lived on earthquakes,
the time of blade tongues
and poison drugs, ugly betrayals and back door bullshit.
When divorcing, wear a black wedding dress,
drain love like old gasoline
and kiss stench-breath vultures like you mean it.
The good man grown is still the coffin of the boy I raised.
Who is this, holding my grand daughter?
We tried to save each other, and did, but with new skins.
Starlings nest noisily in dawn chimneys.
Blackbirds wear old angers coolly on their shoulders.
I learn from them,
learn from solitude,
learn from time passing,
and am content enough, having done all I could.
______________
for dverse poetics "from a place of pain"