Saint Julian Press

Elizabeth Cohen ~ Poet

 

 

Birdless

 

Maybe it has happened to someone you know

Someone lucky, who once lived

beneath a migratory path of cranes

 

But something broke, left them birdless

stranded in the grey light of 2:00 am Gunsmoke

in the company of the hawkers of special mops

their lucky lives blown wildly off course

 

Maybe it happened to you

Your life unzipped from your toes

like the charwoman’s shadow

Your farm in foreclosure and the baby

grown into a woman who never calls

 

leaving you alone in the 3:00 am

flicker of detective shows

and frenetic tap dancers at 4:36

not a bird in sight

Just watch the houses from the night train

and you will see they are lit from within

by the blue cube glow of Cheers

and earthquake news from other lands

 

It happened to me. The Robin Redbreast

the mud swallows on the porch

egrets in the field            the polysyllabic jays

the velvet scrimshaw of my nights etched with bats

all replaced by infinite changeable things

 

Everyone, everywhere, sleeping with television

 

 

 

 

ELIZABETH COHEN © 2016