SMALL RED BIRDS

a poem

“You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.”

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

Scholars, humanists, wild geese, peace freaks,

I’m feeling burnt out. Anyone else? How do we heap stones when the creek is dry?

Nonetheless, I dug this poem from somewhere out of me.

SMALL RED BIRDS

Today’s rain comes in singular fat drops, 
irregular and distant, which flatten onto
the blue ash tree’s leaves scraping up against 
the office window. One by one, each leaf trembles, 
violently and briefly, under the weight, still 
the branches below remain mostly unmoved. 
The movement, behind the wet glass, is 
indistinguishable from a small bird landing. 
There is a red bird I’d like for to visit again. Despite 
the odds, I suspect a scarlet tanager. More likely,
the northern cardinal whose mate has taken shelter 
in the oak near the wood line during this odd storm. 
I cannot will the scarlet tanager, much less 
anything else. But each leaf and it’s dramatic 
weeping could be an unlikely bird landing. 

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Be brave and kind out there. It’s a mad world.

I love you,

EBG