Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow

 

 

 

         DESERT BIRD
 

I am out in this desert nine years now, and I suffer

for the cold steely rain of other birds’ days.  I,

a desert bird; not kin to the orange-breasted

conspicuous robin who industriously abides

the downpour for the plump, pinkish worms to unearth

prone on the walk, like delicacies adrift off a shipwreck;

nor to the crafty, aping blue jay, who, stringing a predator,

descends screaming; nor the blood-red cardinal, skilled operatic,

who against whitest snow, stops the breath

from his perfect beauty.  I, the bird exiled; the soup pot holds

no cup of broth for me.  In this blistering land no melody

betrays my post, my song squeaks and creaks, my bill

less a bill than a pincer, and so, pathetically, I covet.

Come dusk, why I put up a racket is at last

I know the sun is a nettle who will tool me to its whims,

water is first and last, shade the sustainer, and shiny

black bees, big as a man’s thumb, beckon me through the holes

in woody things to desert greenery spiked with fangs.

The cutting thorns and blades mark my body’s borders.

Sparse blossoms of color, vigilantly reared; artless blooms

but fiercely policed.  When life feels a mutiny

I fly to the water I think I see.

I will continue to die for it.

Copyright © 2003 Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow.  All Rights Reserved.

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