Please enjoy today’s selection: “The Sorrowing of Birds” by Jane Yolen, which appears in Poeming Pigeons – Poems about Birds:

The Sorrowing of Birds

When I think of you,
I hear birds soaring,
sorrowing above the trees,
their songs, perfect phrases of grief,
where once I heard joy.

The tapping of woodpeckers
I decode into elegies,
The peeping of hatchlings
under the bathroom window
are constant spring reminders
of my loss.

How can I let it go entire,
when the birds are my memory,
when every morning they sing
an oratorio to their old friend.
There is finality in obituary,
but not true closure,
even eight years along.

Bird song and its soaring sorrow
sustains me even
while it makes me linger
longer in the past.
I need no recordings of birdsong
to remind me,
just the open window
and the dawn.

The post Poem of the Day (04-05-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Even Death

Even death’s bone hand
over your mouth
has not stopped that converse.

Even the years without you
have not limited
what we say to one another,

Even the nights alone
have not put full stop
to our sentences.

Even a bird in its ellipses,
unseen by your field glasses,
remains in our exchanges.

Even my death will not cut off
the love that lingers still
in our mouths.

Even.

The post Even Death by Jane Yolen appeared first on The Poetry Box.