Blue

  BLUE

I opened

this morning to a bluebird,
dead in the fine ashes
left of yesterday’s fire,
soft as down.

The eyes to her world
gone dead, she squints now
at something else
beyond sky and blue
feathered flight.

Such a delicate
illusion of blueness
for which there are
no words.

If there is a word,

it should not
be spoken, but held
somewhere back
of the tongue

in the place
where its song
made a space
within us - to sleep
in our ear, and to curl
in this shell of time

whispering.

I put on Paul Simon, singing
    “these are the days
    of miracles and wonders”

    “the way we look
    to a distant constellation
    dying in the corner of the sky.”

and find myself
slow dancing around the room

my arms held out
to the beautiful beat of wings,
coming,
going.