VINYL POETRY

Volume 6, July 2012

BIRDIE
Donika RossView Contributor’s Note

Sonnet in which only one bird appears

When did one season begin and another end?
What branched like a nerve? What burrowed
like a heart? Can we say love?
What will the yellowing tree bear?

*
Between each rib, cartilage and blood.
Beneath this cage of bone, four chambers.
Inside each chamber, you, throbbing,
compelling the blood and air.

*
There is a body I hold like a sound,
a name my mind cradles like a pit
on the tongue. But where is the flesh?
And how will it weigh my palm?

*
If we can say love, here is the ocean.
Here the white bird of your heart.
Here the hard sun and sand. Here a town

closed for the season, a man wearing
all his clothes, asleep on the beach.
We say mountain. We say nothing.

We make a cross on the sand. We discover
the wonder of perpendicularity.