Holly Day

Cinq poèmes pour la nouvelle année

 

The Day the Leaves Started to Change

 

The bird flutters into the church like some sort of portent

disturbs the service with a flurry of feathers. It would be nice

if it was a dove, or some brilliant, golden, phoenix-type of bird

but it’s just a sparrow come in from the cold. 

 

The preacher waits until the bird has settled before continuing on

with his speech, but he is distracted. Every time the bird 

moves to another corner of the church, he instinctively covers the top

of his bald head with one robed arm as if 

too used to having birds shit on him 

 

while flying overhead. 

 

Why Not

 

He tells me, I swear if you stay on the drugs

I will never leave. He puts them in my hand 

I make a fist around the little pills 

that will keep him here

careful not to drop them. 

 

I fill my head with songs I learned 

in school long ago, memories

of the men who came before him 

that didn’t mind my little rainbows

never made me beg for sweetness. 

 

The Last Days of the Flu

 

We move like dying butterflies against each other

chitinous wings rasping dry in final death throes

like dead leaves pushed along the sidewalk by the wind

like dead scales sloughed off against a rock. 

 

I hear my jagged breath echoing your own feeble one

lungs rattling like an engine running dry but refusing to die

gears almost catching but slipping again and again

if I stay here too long, here, next to you

I might catch it, too. 

 

Birds Fly

 

I wave my right hand

and the bus appears. I wave my left

and it disappears in a rumble

of choking smoke and verbal abuse.

I sit back down on the bench

let my cat out of its carrier

take my shoes off and shut my eyes.

 

I wake to find my cat has brought me

another dead bird, eyes bloodied

beak still cracked in a final silent

“cheep.” I cradle the ruffled mess of feathers

in my arms, think of kittens and babies

my grandmother boiling the feathers off of 

giant white chickens

the trek of dinner from a down-lined nest 

to a plate on a table.

 

I close my eyes and will

my own wings to unfold, feel their stillborn nubs

twitch vainly beneath my skin. I am too heavy now

to fly even with wings. Too heavy, too old.

I dream of the cherub I could have been

if I had been born in a nest lovingly assembled 

of twigs and mother-scented fluff.

 

Hot Sunshine Song

 

I tried to open my heart to you

felt the petals stick as they struggled

like the warped bud of a sick tulip—fungal

at the root, I tried

to love you but I didn’t know how.

 

You tried to help me, I think

armed with harpoons and bone snares that 

meant love, but only the jagged edges

registered anything with me.

I forget the good things I know were there.

 

We could have been wonderful together

if the right pieces had met at the right time,

instead of crashing like icebergs, breaking into cold snow

 

Holly Day (hollylday.blogspot.com) is a writing instructor at The Loft literary center in Minneapolis and Hugo House in Seattle. She writes from the land of 1,000 lakes.

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