Three Poems

Bird in a Bell Jar

Bird in a bell jar,
the rain can’t reach you here,

can’t plump your shriveled skin
or bead on your bright beak.

The flies can’t burrow, the worms
can’t tunnel inside your flaxen core.

No breath blurs the jar or keeps the moths
from flinging themselves at celadon light,

their parchment-thin wings
unable to break

the hush of glass. Bird in a bell jar,
bird cloistered in silence,

if I cup my ear to your cold shroud,
will your song echo back,

faint as waves
haunting a shell’s pearlescent cave?

—PLATE XXIV, Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio, 1879-1886

How can we not love
your nests? Each twig

a tender offering
from male to female

as he stands upon her back.
Such economy, the way the heft

of your bodies molds the sticks.
Spare, we should say, not crude,

not flimsy. Please forgive us
for finding your tiny heads

so comical above your plump,
delicious breasts. But how we covet

the blue rims lining your black eyes!
And your tranquil coloring—

amid summer’s dazzle
of emerald and ruby flight,

we rest our eyes
on the soft grays of your wings,

the rosy buff of your chests.
But mostly we adore

the rattle of wind
through your wings, and how,

when dawn’s chatter
rises to cacophony,

we can always discern
your throat’s pulse.

Oh dove, the sweet ache
of your lament.

Teach us to sing
our grief.

If we were crows,
we’d gather in the trees
and look down at you,

the shock of your body—
a heap of black feathers,
broken neck and wing—

eased by the veil of leaves.
We’d call to each other,
our voices rattling

branches and windowpanes.
Some of us would fly
from tree to tree to make sure

we all understood.
Perhaps we’d even
scold you a little,

our sentiment as blunt
as our beaks. We’d know
we couldn’t rouse you,

though it would please us
to sense the mice stirring,
the moles tunneling

deeper below ground
in your honor.
If not for the trees

beginning to pitch and moan
beneath our weight,
we could go on and on.

We wouldn’t want to
leave you.
We’d stretch and thin our caws

into silence. Above you,
our wings would beat the sky,
our grief unfurling

like a shroud.