What the birds say   

…the birds bring messages from the dead, and the dead
    bring messages from the universe.   - Susan Griffin
 

That year I lived in Chicago again, back home
by the lake, but getting ready to leave.
I was thinking of the past when they died;
birds came every day, flying me into the future.
 
I lived with the birds; we nested almost together
up on the third floor corner. They coveted my porch
and my kitchen, flapped into my neighbor's fenced trees.
I envied their sky. I watched their wings.
 
Winter pigeons huddled at my leaded panes,
burbling city secrets in their breasts;
gulls flew seventeen blocks in the spring
to my porch, shrieking lake, beach, all over my desk.
 
The summer birds, sparrows in cherry trees
next door, were louder than light in the morning;
Canada geese came by in the fall, flapping
to Rosehill, walking in grass all over the dead.
 
Crows fly there round the year, flocking
the graveyard trees. They croak
the raw call of their shiny black throats;
they perch on the gravestones and scream.
 
No one of mine was there in the ground
but four were dying that year every day
while I walked through Rosehill crying,
reading aloud the stones of strangers.
 
I walked with the birds in Rosehill, listening,
thinking of dying, what I would lose, how
it would go for me, after. I waited for messages.
What do they say? I asked each time, What?
 
I asked them all. The raucous gulls laughed at me.
The pigeons said, We don't care. The sparrows were
so loud they never heard me and the geese flew south,
rising on wings spread like blankets all over my head.
 
I went to the crows. In the garden of dead people
I cried to them each time: Where have they gone?
Tell me. They must have words for me, give me
their words. They want me to know; tell me.
 
The crows flicked their little black eyes; they looked at me.
They pecked in the grass and made crackling sounds.
I went home and packed up the dishes, folded
my clothes, and put tape around all of the boxes.

The Man Who Loves Trees

loves through the seasons:
bare trunk, fat buds, full green, wet red
and their names: sweet gum
cypress  oak  spruce  willow  maple
red bud forest pansy
and their parts: leaf  cone  flower
bark  root  branch  boll  twig  needle
lacy fans of rough crochet, pods
like cigars, like rattling gourds.
 
He loves their cast-offs crisp on the ground
their sound under his boots on the trail
rustling, breaking down into dust.
He loves, later, their sawn boards:
wood, its grain a watery maze
polished, rubbed into light, glowing
still with heat from the heart of the tree
like his own heart, pumping dark liquid
out to the limbs, out to his own warm hands.
 

Coorespondence

The first cards had pictures:
Kodachrome, Vistaview
birds on mountains
flowers on walls
flying and climbing
in countries I’d never seen.
 
The early letters came
in thick blue envelopes
franked with bright stamps:
queens, castles
monuments with flags
rising, waving over graves.
 
Later a card said Honey
I’ve got to rush, we’re moving
but I thought you
would like this: scenery
lonely that way you love.
Gulls fly inland here for miles.
 
Later letters said Jesus
I can’t believe what’s happening
here. I mean: I don’t
want to. You should believe
I’ll come back, believe
so I will, like a fairy tale.
 
Cards stopped. Letters
came in thin brown sleeves
saying: How can I tell you
What can I say and When
will we understand how to
do this, how not to do this?
 
No letters. Long time.
Radio, tv, movies, web
zines, newspapers.
I wrote: I was
answering carefully
what you might have sent.
 
Then the ones with cuts:
blacked-out phrases
written on transparent tissue
haphazardly folded,
jammed into white
bag-like covers.
 
No stamps: only
the government postmark.