I heard a crash.
The whole house shook.
I stepped outside the door to look.
A rust red cardinal sprawled motionless
on the wet pavement, orange leaf
covering the body like a blanket.
As if it merely slept, dreaming
dreams of days past.
They couldn’t last.
On spring evenings
April showers bring May flowers.
What do the flowers bring?
Aggression. Mating. He glimpsed
a rival in the window.
So I thought of him wings akimbo.
It was nothing but a reflection
etched in glass. I’d seen it time and time again
these bloody males obsessed with the past.
A great gale swept them up.
The bodies that slept could find no future.
No wounds left to suture.
I tied sparkly tape to the window.
He will have to find real foes
rather than imaginary ones.
Annotations:
1. Male birds during mating season often crash into windows due to viewing their reflections as possible rivals in defense of their mate and territory. This defensive action is made worse by the close proximity of a nest to a window. I know from personal experience.
2. In in order to combat the aforementioned male birds' proclivity to unaliving themselves on windows, a home or business owner might put sparkly tape up on the windows to break up their reflection.
3. Mating season for birds tends toward spring into early summer hence the, "April showers bring May flowers" bit.
4. In writing about the rust belt, I often bemoan the seeming emptiness and lack of a future for all its peoples. This is an issue that goes beyond the rust belt. It plagues the entire modern world, this meaninglessness and lack of a future. As such, many including myself, are looking to the past for answers. Hopefully, there are answers to be found that can lead to a path to the future for both ourselves and our descendants. Many natives to the rust belt, including myself, due to lack of future prospects, money, and witnessing our own poor parenting won't be having any such descendants. What do we then have to live for as a legacy? Is it merely to take care of other people's children? That is a depressing thought.
5. The meaning of the word akimbo is limbs splayed out in a bent manner.
6. The meaning of the word suture is a row of stitches holding together a wound.
7. In looking for an answer to the future question, or as such, "finding real foes rather than imaginary ones" one must look to the travails of government whose real power players often run in secret circles in the upper reaches of that sea of people coming out of elite loins and schools. Most won't have the luxury of viewing let alone entering into such elite schools or secret societies within said schools. As such, those on the outside must consider such peoples a true rather than imaginary foe. The imaginary foe being those people of a similar lower class who are more visible on a day to day basis but who serve as a mask for those behind the curtain.
Leave a Reply