From Trees

I write of the mourning bird's persistence. Only I know precisely what this evokes. The sadness of certain sounds brought home. Sun as nest for childhood symphony. Perimeter roads charted solo or with siblings.

We have grown but still there is an edge. Where frolic is sparked by song. With recipes. In the croon of the crow or a room of forgotten friends turning to smile on your approach. Gray doves lift and sail. I am brought present while swaddled in the pleasure of past napping. Holding still long enough to know the moaning, nostalgia of never forgetting.

Walking a rutted road with shiny pebbles and pick up sticks fallen from trees. Girl at home at a window with downpour on the other side of glass. Forgiving what is absent, in age we register connections, yet we run our hands over inherited chenille and seek. Mournful bird song. Grandmother who always fed us. Letters from invisible fathers. The tangle of hedge and holly with thorns. Shadow dog at the foot of the bed, resting. 

Hair washed and tangled. Hair braided. The unrelenting pest of a Charley Horse in such young legs. And the prayers at night when all was simply erased. No sound even from the last of the lightning bugs still sailing the dusk lawns. Only the whisper of vinyl on the turntable when the grown ups settle down too. A single match. A lonely cigarette. The road drying again after rain.