Because my father is dead
in the darkness I hear birds.
Not the willowy chirps of sparrows,
not the clear insistence of cardinals.
Instead, I hear him, some de-feathered pulp
wailing under the rainy Connecticut skies,
some scrap dragged splintery and
gasping through its last night on earth.
Tomorrow will hold nothing
but a shatter of feathers,
a wet peony, scattered thorns
in the dawn’s soggy grass.
Or maybe he never figured as prey
rather the owl
hunting from the sharp perch of a fractured pine,
or the swift grasp of the Cooper’s Hawk
broken chested but still barreling
after starlings.
In how many of my poems can his body crash
against a summer grass?
My mother holding a flashlight to his eyes, his mouth,
only a yellow light between them,
the vacancy that comes with such a sash of stars,
the ants marching fat and black into the ground.
Before, if I heard birds in the night
I never dreamed they could be harbingers
of disintegration, or my father’s voice
calling back
there isn’t a bird in the night who is also a man
there isn’t a soul that climbs inside a dark sky
and falls down a winged thing.
Allyson Wuerth
Allyson Wuerth is a writer, a high school English teacher, and the owner/curator of All My Unicorns, her kitschy vintage shop (www.etsy.com/shop/allmyunicorns). She has published poetry in Quarterly West, Cimarron Review, and several other journals. She received an MFA in Poetry from the University of Pittsburgh. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, children, and five adorable cats.
