turned on us once and swelled
with an issue of birds. Each orange breast
too large for its spine, they threatened to drop
and splatter like so many fruits. I'm frightened
of birds in the first place. In Illinois
they stay the right size and only come out by ones
and twos, but I won't go barefoot. Remember
the crack of a wing in the grass? It was warmer
than grass.
I still think the window kept us straight. Twice
a day the light congealed, we could or couldn't
see the bridge for fog. Either way was reassuring.
And if someone had asked, the branch
was too parochial, we knew it
no? making order out of all that sky.
When better dyes arrived in the wagons of entrepreneurs,
the Navajo weavers knew craft and a past
from nostalgia: they began on brighter rugs.
At one point in the border of each, an erratic line
a single stitch wide joins the outside
to the pattern at the heart. On a spirit line,
does the spirit come in or depart? Our birds
had been eating what the rain turned up,
new rain got rid of the birds. I'm thinking of you.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
by Linda Gregerson, 1980
