The Dead Bird
By Christy Call

The dead bird did not sing
through the shards of yellow light lingering over
the open diamond beak.
Was the light too bright? Too thick
like the afternoon’s fog or the clouding in the bird’s eye?
Expectant, I listened for nothing.

Death sat still and soft on the feathers,
delicately preening the purples, the brown,
even the ridged beak, sharp as a diamond—
what would it have sung had the afternoon not ended?
Something would have sounded.

The early evening bent over the dead bird,
Watching the dead bird drain into the cracks,
through the cement’s hold,
beyond the pebble parts like seeds,
beneath the broken window, but still in its shadow.

The cold smearing the window’s light
looked like the dead bird’s dead song.
Before the accident, had the glass been God-white?
Had the dead bird then flown a faltering flight?
Flight-colors had bleached into grey.

The transparent pane mouthed, “Not guilty.”
It looked shameful, with one gaping jagged hole:
an open eye or its own diamond beak.
The shards of glassy light, fallen rain-tears;
they dimly washed the dead bird.

Day did not touch the dead bird;
it was too late for the sun to stroke it
with its yellow, healing hands.
I stopped listening for what wasn’t heard.
The silence became the dead bird.

Age ten: Christy Call writes her first poem. Rivers are involved. As are tears and face cracks. And just as she does not talk about tampons two years later, she tells no one. Maybe it isn't a poem after all. Eighth grade: She discovers that she cannot pronounce the word "urn." Urine. Urn. She simply cannot read Keats. High School: She reads Keats. College: She is accepted to Northwestern's poetry program, accepts and writes a novel. Graduate School: She studies creative non-fiction, but her professors believe she is concentrating in poetry. She blushes at the compliment, and in this inspiration, writes a poem about an urn.

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