Covered In Birds - multiple poets

[Larry Robinson]

Covered In Birds

		for Bill Horvitz  1947 to 2017

Once our hands were small flightless birds
longing only for the recession of gravity, the wings
of angels. Pressed together, though they did not rise
or raise us up as flapping might, in prayer
they gave off light.

Once I dreamed the two long melancholy notes 
of the song sparrow, and sang them back 
and dreamed of flight, my plumes open 
to sweep the moon that rose above dark hills 
a great distance inhabited by sadness

I dreamed the birds, all the birds. 
I dreamed crow, those missives of night, those 
morning stars erased, whose message remained 
a mystery held in the shimmer of feathers in sun
so black they became pure light.

Raptor, too, could seem the source. 
Golden Eagle, a peach-white river of flight across fog, 
a struck match igniting air. Hawk
was the highest leaf on the tree 
and by night became fire.

I dreamed rising and rising from the marsh reeds, 
an iridescence shedding water without thought. 
I dreamed the heron’s mincing. I dreamed the birds

and saw a gust of gulls that became the horizon – 
rising and rising without what we know as thought.
I heard a lullaby and wondered
that the little seed-eater had given Brahms his first notes.

I dreamed mocking bird sang to nourish the flowers 
with longing, opening and arising from solitude until
they blossomed into pure joy.

Once I dreamed the birds, all the birds, showed me how
their up carries the weight of light. Opening and rising,
I saw a puff of smoke out over the fields, a crucible 
of starlings, open sky, the churn and fall and tumble, 
their swoop of flight clear as script I could almost decipher.

I dreamed of all the birds, and vultures came
flying before the scythe of the sun, hard copper
beaks, brown feathers prayer flags fluttering
over my bones.

Rising and arising below clouds whose weight 
they alone know, I dreamed the birds,
all the birds I could not name came down,
calling me by the name I had forgotten.

The birds, all the birds came down
and carried me away. In their flight 
I read the indecipherable script of the gods. 
Peace it said, and as I knew it, the word vanished 
in their turning against the wind.


[Composite poem by 9 Sonoma County poets

Elizabeth Carothers Herron
Katherine Hastings
Mike Tuggle
Maya Khosla
Phyllis Meshelum
Jodi Hottel
Greg Mahrer
Larry Robinson
Terry Ehret

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