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A Day With Blackbirds
by Phibby Venable

The day erased the blackboard of dark but the gray streaks stayed
and the blackbirds pried open the‎ 90% chance of snow. Their beaks lost
and searching across an unforgiving sheet of restraint. How I wish I had a troop of actors,
dancers, wine & cheesemakers enroute. My heart is too loud on this rocky hill where anger
always pushes love aside. No thing crosses the hill but solitude, so tightly wrapped that
nothing slips from underneath its stiff garments. These are the days when I search
for the promise of angels and listen to the ice stretch and crack into bass notes on the river.
I cannot find a soul to talk to & sometimes I am afraid that I will look & not even find a soul.
The blackbirds scratch casually, one bony leg against the other, while staring straight ahead.
They are almost statues and sometimes their silhouettes become black cardboard against the snow
and I can almost believe they are leaving. Some days I can almost want them not to go.
Why should I resent them so? Poor bony cut out birds despairing snow, dispersing their
pathetic path of tiny feet across the snow. My little effigies with long bent tails, humbly cold,
and caught in a search, longing for food they cannot unearth. I change my mood to see
them cold. I almost want them not to go.


 

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