Picture Window
A motionless body
beside the house.
Looking out
the floor-to-ceiling window
on a grounded bird.
Its inert form
seems perfectly intact;
balsa-wood bones, fluttering heart,
the still iridescent
meticulous feathers
works of art.
But something vital
has shattered inside;
its pea-sized brain
gossamer skull.
The angle of sun
reflection of glass.
A dull thud,
and another stunned bird
feathering down.
To see a creature of movement
so oddly inanimate
seems deeply unnatural.
The stillness
of a dead bird.
But in only seconds
the finality of death
takes on weight,
the gravitas
that is its due.
Yet how light it feels,
as if too insubstantial
even for life.
And what chance
has a tiny bird
when instinct's inadequate,
when glass occurs
conjured out of air?
From improbable birth
to interruption, mid-flight
it leads so contingent a life.
But when a picture window kills
it seems intrinsically wrong;
an unsuspecting bird
culled,
the forest
stripped of song.
I like the mischievous bit of
misdirection that starts this poem. Is this a murder mystery?!!
I like the words that capture the
violence of immoveable glass: words like , stunned, interruption
mid-flight, unsuspecting, culled, and stripped.
I think my favourite stanza is
this: To see a creature of movement/ so oddly inanimate/ seems deeply
unnatural./ The stillness/ of a dead bird./ But in only seconds/ the finality
of death/ takes on weight,/ the gravitas/ that is its due. This is how it
feels, stumbling on a dead bird: I do a quick double-take -- a grounded bird, a
bird not in motion, seems oddly unnatural; and then how quickly it sinks in,
and this feather-lite thing takes on the gravity of death. What makes this work
even better is the beginning of the next stanza: the physical lightness, placed
against that heaviness.
And I like the very last word: the abrupt introduction of
sound, when everything before was visual (if you don't count dull thud!);
the way sound so poignantly recalls the uninhabited forest as it once existed.
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