In response to Claudette’s Weekly Writing Challenge #7: Song.
This piece is from Unraveling, a group of poems I wrote two years ago while doing a poem a day. I was also in the process of moving back to the city of my birth after being away for almost forty years.
Migrating Moment
No chorus this morning,
only wind moving through
leaves of trees
and muffled tones
of single mourning dove.
Wish I knew all the words
to bird songs tossed out
at start of each new day.
Distinct dialects I never
had time to learn,
or ability to curve
tongue and lips around.
Rummage sales, where
offerings are as diverse
as bird songs. Hunting
for things to fill kitchen,
things let go of, given away,
or tossed in haste to leave
two years past. Now, must
fill lack with other peoples’
cast-offs.
Feel like bird gathering
twigs from here, there,
hoping results will all come,
stick together, fit,
not topple at slightest
breeze, that moves
through leaves in trees,
carrying bits of foreign
languages tossed out
by nearest neighbors.
Elizabeth Crawford 3/13/09
Originally written 6/17/07
