Hey there! Happy December! I haven’t posted in a while, but then I got this poem from Laura Rodley and I wanted to share it.
Peace, love, and solace
I Kid You Not
The bird whose name he does not know
flew smack against his armpit-
the beginning of the heart meridian-
smack through the car window,
bounced to the floor amidst papers
and cookie wrappers as though dead,
eyes closed, smacked him hard enough
for it to hurt, leave a faint bruise.
He stopped, when it was safe
on the Vermont country road with no shoulders
where people get killed walking
and scrounged through the papers,
the bird’s eyes open now, beaded on his,
he lay the small bird, wren shaped,
pale green, white stripe on its head with black speckles,
one he’d never seen before, nor later find
in the Audubon book,
lay it on the near stump, scarcely breathing,
set out a ripped-in-half Dixie cup of water,
hoping he would drink. The small beating heart
of the bird did not stop, and he left it
to continue his own route, one week before he was thumped
again, smacked hard from the inside window of his own body,
in the same place on both sides of his torso,
hard enough to stop him in his running flight,
hard enough to bring him home,
when a different white car saved him,
brought him to the emergency room,
to lay him down to catch his breath,
give his stunned blocked heart a chance to open,
and that car was driven by me.
Laura Rodley © 2018
Laura Rodley is a Massachusetts poet whose latest books are Counter Point (Prolific Press) and Turn Left at Normal (Big Table Publishing). Her poem “Resurrection” (published on New Verse News) appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition).
Laura Rodley teaches the As You Write It memoir class and has edited and published As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology Volumes I-VI, which was nominated for a Mass Book Award.
She is also a freelance writer for publications such as Country Folks.
THANK-YOU to Laura Rodley for sharing her work here. You inspire.
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