An Accident

In the Salt Marsh: Poems (2004)

Thunk. A goldfinch dropped to the deck,her head bobbing, unstrung,her buttery breast warm when I picked her up,her left eye pushed back where it struck the glass,the other open, black as a currantbut clouding over, like the day itself,as I carried her in a clamshell serving againas a coffin for a creature leaving its element.I tucked up her feet and the wing splayedby the blow. All afternoon my bird layin state on the glass table under the umbrella.Her crushed eye sank deeper. A dropperfulof blood darkened and slicked her breast.With night coming on, I fetched my birdand closed her up in the shedwhere the crows would not find her.On the third day, maggots writhed in her bellylike a terrible birth, and I rushed her outside,a black rag of herself. One wing stuck outlike a knife plunged through a scorched bun.The fifth day brought rain. The maggots leftto start their own journey.Your tail feathers loosened, one by one,and your bones appeared in tatters of flesh.May you wake in your next life as a glad bridewho turns to her groom and tells him her dream.When I was a bird, the wind carried me,and when I died, somebody said goodbye.