Death
Two of them. Bobbing yellow finches who would
both fit in my hand with room to spare—that's how
my mother said that we were born—if I were
stiller stooping low within the yellow wrack
of a baby linden tree to take a break
from eating their hard April berries, being
with the giant. Whose heart—it is said—beats once
to our hundred. Only noticing at dawn
that the storm drains swelled and sank into a stream
with mushy banks for dogs to lap and children,
over the course of the morning, to challenge
each other to span it with chairs and pallets,
lay manifest like that for a month, then drain
revealing empty veins of deadened grasses.
How many times in that flood did we puncture
its gurgling adolescence snatching stems
that welled up with the first heave of rainwater,
or its lofty idyll days with snaps and clicks,
and when it came to pass after a hundred
lives of ours, did we disturb its long farewell
by picking at the plastic caps and wrappers
sloughed? They held for a moment on the low branch
and I just barely noticed that their bellies
hid a gash of green, maturity, wet dawn.