Bird House

original impulse
deletion
new text

Walking with my mother I saw
a burned out house, soot-marked,
blackened, evacuated.
But what struck my eye
was a bird house, also burned out but attached
still to the center of the porch. The bird house,
in miniature, depicting the drama of fire
more than the charred remains of the home.
Black soot streaks, the shadow of flame,
marking the memories of a family in crisis.

Perhaps a mother-bird chirped
for help here, singing out alarm
through the heart-shaped hole.
Who would come to aid her aid? Is there
heroism in the avian world
apart from the a mother's instinct to save her young?.
Did she push her chicks
through the heart-shaped hole
before the chicks could fly?
Did they tumble and crush, hobbled
for the rest of their avian lives?

With her tailfeathers brushing against a burning wall
and a heart-shaped site of sky in front,
making the best choices that she can,
which crisis does a mother bird choose?
Black soot streaks, the shadow of flame,
marking the memories of a family in crisis,
memories now abandoned and quiet.