My six year old granddaughter whispers
to the bird outside her window
that she’s leaving. Her tender-hearted goodbyes
flutter in her tiny breast, uncertain
if the bird might just be lost
without her
And I recall the day that I walked in on her
eyes scrunched tight and straining,
like a woman giving birth,
her sideways whisper, ‘Is it woiking?!’
‘Is what working?’ my furtive breath replied.
‘My wings! — Are they growing?’
‘Oh yes, oh yes, I think I see the buds!”
Today, she flew
with her family, across town
though to her perhaps it seemed like
the migration of those monarchs, which she’d shown me
in her library book that morning,
so amazed at those fragile wings
that carried them the whole way!
from Canada to Mexico
(the black ones were dying, she’d said,
but their children would survive)
Landing in her new home,
we patter side by side
on the windy path to her new school.
Her heart takes in the sidewalk chalk
and dandelion puffs to dare her dreams,
and then, around the bend,
we spot the birds
fluttering in those budding trees, and her heart
leaps because they found their way to her.
And she didn’t even have to speak
bird talk at all! She’d just had to use
her own girl voice.
Recent Comments