…versifying an apology!
There is, also, a wailing on the inside,
a weight that colors the grief over us:
at springtime when birds nestle amidst us, circling the backyard with dead twigs
and dry grass in slender beaks softened
with desire for the unborn, the tokens of
a bespoken future. It is a trauma to be
the killjoy to new beginnings, to drain
the warmth of a brood under the feathers of mother. I am desperate for penance,
an indulgence for a roost pulverized
by the zealous nurture of a new homeowner,
for the sticky residue of a broken yolk, erased
before it forms. Does a mother bird return
and bewail the loss of her home, repining
for her broken egg like a crow
in an assembly of mourners? Perhaps
a poem can redeem this guilt eating up
my bowels, but it is the shadows trailing
the bird that write the stanzas of her next turn.
James Yékú 