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Do you know what I was, how I lived? —Louise Glück

It is a goldfinch one of the two

small girls, both daughters

of a friend, sees hit the window

and fall into the fern. No one hears

the small thump but she, the youngest, sees

the flash of gold against the mica sky

as the limp feathered envelope crumples into the green.

How many times in a life will we witness

the very moment of death? She wants a box

and a small towel some kind of comfort

for this soft body that barely fits

in her palm. Its head rolling side to side,

neck broke, eyes still wet and black as seed.

Her sister, now at her side, wears a dress too thin

for the season, white as the winter

only weeks away. She wants me to help,

wants a miracle. Whatever I say now

I know weighs more than the late fall’s

layered sky, the jeweled leaves

of the maple and elm. I know, too,

it is the darkest days I’ve learned to praise —

the calendar packages up time, the days shrink and fold away

until the new season. We clothe, burn,

then bury our dead. I know this;

they do not. So we cover the bird,

story its flight, imagine his beak

singing. They pick the song

and sing it over and over again.

Fall by Didi Jackson

#Didi Jackson

How many times has your red-hot prayer slipped from your hands?

— Didi Jackson, from "Poem With the Last Line as the First" (The Atlantic, August 25, 2024)

#prayer #give up #future #now #didi jackson

— Didi Jackson, Two Mule Deer

#currently reading #lit #literature #words #poetry #poem #dark academia #didi jackson #alt text available

The burning bush is an invasive species, yet cardinals and chickadees flock to its red seeds and flamed leaves in the fall. I should cut it to a stump and rot its roots, but instead I admire its show of color, watching the damage as it spreads.

from “The Burning Bush” by Didi Jackson, found in The Best American Poetry 2019, edited by Major Jackson and David Lehman, p. 69

#poetry #lit #Didi Jackson #The Best American Poetry 2019

“Fall” - Didi Jackson

Do you know what I was, how I lived? —Louise Glück It is a goldfinch one of the two small girls, both daughters of a friend, sees hit the window and fall into the fern. No one hears the small thump but she, the youngest, sees the flash of gold against the mica sky as the limp feathered envelope crumples into the green. How many times in a life will we witness the very moment of death? She wants a box and a small towel some kind of comfort for this soft body that barely fits in her palm. Its head rolling side to side, neck broke, eyes still wet and black as seed. Her sister, now at her side, wears a dress too thin for the season, white as the winter only weeks away. She wants me to help, wants a miracle. Whatever I say now I know weighs more than the late fall’s layered sky, the jeweled leaves of the maple and elm. I know, too, it is the darkest days I’ve learned to praise — the calendar packages up time, the days shrink and fold away until the new season. We clothe, burn, then bury our dead. I know this; they do not. So we cover the bird, story its flight, imagine his beak singing. They pick the song and sing it over and over again.

#Poems #Fall #Didi Jackson

-- Didi Jackson, Two Mule Deer

#currently reading #literature #lit #words #poetry #poem #didi jackson #dark academia

In a meadow as wide as a wound I thought to stop and study the lesser stitchwort’s white flowers lacing up boot-level grasses when I was scolded in song by a black and white bird whose wings sipped air, swallow-like, until he landed on the highest tip of yellow dock, still singing his beautiful warning, the brown female with him in fear. The warning was real: the anniversary of my husband’s suicide. What was the matter with life? Sometimes when wind blows, the meadow moves like an ocean, and on that day, I was in its wake— I mean the day in the meadow. I mean the day he died. This is not another suicide poem. This is a poem about a bird I wanted to know and so I spent that evening looking up his feathers and flight, spent most of the night searching for mating habits and how to describe the yellow nape of his neck like a bit of gothic stained glass, or the warm brown females with a dark eyeline. How could I have known like so many species they too are endangered? God must be exhausted: those who chose life; those who chose death. That day I braided a few strips of timothy hay as I waited for the pair to move again, to lift from the field and what, live? The dead can take a brother, a sister; not really. The dead have no one. Here in this field I worried the mowers like giant gorging mouths would soon begin again and everything would be as it will.

Bobolink by Didi Jackson

#didi jackson

Like a hundred gray ears the river stones are layered

in a pile near the shed where mourning doves slow their peck and bobble to listen

to a chorus of listening. Small buds on the lilac perk up.

A cardinal’s torpedoed call comes in slow waves of four,

round after round. It’s a love call; a call to make him known to himself.

The stones listen harder, decipher the song; attempt

to offer back its echo. But fail.

This is not a poem of coming Spring. This is a poem well aware

that gray flesh is dead flesh. All of the ripe listening

comes at a cost. The first sky is in all skies.