Listen I do not want your pity I was a child and I did
not speak did not understand and now the story has
no power yes I was I still am that one yesterday and
the day before and all the ones that came after listen
I loved more than anything my mother listen this spring
to the wings scraping the air raw watch the seething
shore where dying songbirds are stones the journey
made I stand on this southern shore and spring throws
dying birds like vile rain like rain trying to find its sad
its orphaned way home I stand alone and she has
already been gone a long time and we all know the story
in those seven years the body is remade inside itself
my hands have been recast as the hands of a stranger
she was my mother and he was not my father and you
you are not my lover not my love any longer and all
migrations end but some of us don’t ever make it home
so I’ll go on on moving past the time the hands that forgot
her greet you too as a stranger each gesture a flight path
to a new shore where the joss paper boats sail out
and we wait for their time to end all those years ago
or here on this shore or later on some other