Kathleen Peirce - Red Bird

Kathleen Peirce
Red Bird



We stopped believing we
could name the color of ascension,
and we learned to split the redness
from the cardinal’s voice. But they
came near, especially in winter,
as an absolute comprised of many forms
we could, if not approach, be glad
for the existence of. It was when the inflection
of their song so often rose that we knew again
the correspondence of the visible and oral forms;
how could those who only sang by rising
not rise up? We were glad it was rare for us
to see them fall, but we trusted that they fell
quietly, while in their periphery, inflections
of our sentences continued their descents
from the time we were children who could speak,
who could be brought to weep even by the thought
of our own deaths. What secret had their bodies closed around,
brilliant there, singing up the disappearing song?