What the Sky Gives Up
Corinne Elysse Adams
It is a spring of dead fledglings.
I have seen them tucked into gutters
barely feathered, nested in a hole dug
by our dogs
XXXXXto keep cool.
Have I spent a lifetime of springs
looking up?
Or are things falling faster now—
XXXXXflotsam gathering
in a green tide.
I keep my eyes to the ground,
one baby bird curled on the asphalt,
its iridescent glistening
XXXXXXXXXXlike a clue
amidst pink magnolia blooms.
Soapberry and sumac, purple blossomed buckeye,
desert willow and dogwood, XXXXXXXXXthe concrete is suddenly
a canvas for all of the colors
XXXXXthat once belonged
to the sky.
Summer ripens in the spice of blue-berried
curl barked juniper, misnamed water guzzler,
but I am still so thirsty,
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXstill not ready.
Bats take to wing in a deepeningly warm dusk,
their lives built around the shift of sound
in closeness. Sometimes we live as the crow flies,
from one bright thing to the next;
XXXXXI think we have lost
the secrets
XXXXXof how to make things last.
§
Corinne Elysse Adams is a storycollector, writer, songstress, and high school teacher who currently lives and grows lots of veggies in Austin, Texas. She holds an MSc in Poetry from the University of Edinburgh, and over the past fifteen years has lived all over the world, collecting stories and studying folk writing and musical traditions in India, Ladakh, Japan, Ireland, Scotland, and all around the States. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Confrontation, The Foundling Review, and Alimentum, and was a recipient of a 2009 Dorothy Sargent-Rosenberg poetry prize.