A Blue Jay’s Death

by Deanna Lernihan

An unscripted gust crushed you in its twilit grip, 

you bled while I slept, 

feathered split at the throat,

all your present-tense cries broke from your chest, 

screamed through silk

the home I can’t sew 

together. 

*

In my dreams crumbled masonry 

rippled the swales 

while you were still, 

suddenly intimate, 

like a poem in the driveway. 

*

Today, your mate mourns 

from the power lines, 

her “whisper song” plucks the faithless quiet, 

while my ears pulse

a measured pipe drip

from the catchment area. 

*

Who writes 

the steep demands

of yesterday?

I ask as I bury you, blue jay, by the bricks, 

your fanned feathers

still so blue 

in fallen flight, so vibrant in death, 

as if you’ve waited long 

to speak the wind.

Speak the parts of my father

I cannot reach 

with my spade.

Speak his thumb that jutted distally.

Speak the broken beer bottle in the East River

that sliced it clean.

Speak his skin leathered by the grit of the sun,

his day-laborer shoulders that hauled 

spent carpets

and toilets.

Speak his knees,

all the patella fractures

and what it takes to jump from a roof.

Speak these from your black beak

oiled with the seeded heart 

of a buckling sunflower

parted as human lips

kissed by departed soul.