Fiat Lux

Post date: Mar 15, 2012 12:04:25 AM

My sister asks what ate the bird's eyes

as she cradles the dead chickadee she found

on the porch. Ants, I say, knowing the soft ocular

cells are the easiest way into the red feast of heart,

liver, kidney. I tell her that when they ate the bird

they saw the blue bowled sky, the patchwork

of soybean fields and sunflowers, a bear loping

across a gravel road. Already, they are bringing

back to their tunnels the slow chapters of spring--

a slough drying to become a meadow and the bruised

smell of sex inside flowers. They start to itch

for a mate's black-feathered cheeks and music.

As she cushions the eggs, their queen dreams

of young chickadees stretching their necks and crying

for their mother to protect them until they learn to see.

Sister, it is like this--the visions begin to waver,

and the colony goes mad, fearful they'll never see

another dahlia tell its purple rumor, or see a river commit

itself to the ocean. As the last memory leaves them,

they twitch in their sleep, trying to make out the distant

boatman lifting his lantern, his face disfigured by light.