I GENTLY TOOK THE STRAWBERRY HEART

I GENTLY TOOK THE STRAWBERRY HEART

I gently took the strawberry heart

of the bird with the broken neck

and buried it in a shrine of leaves and grass.

And in a low voice, whispered a blessing.

Under the window of an illusion

like a song you can only hear once

and it’s good for a lifetime of listening,

I buried you with your wings together in prayer.

And I prayed to know what to pray for.

I prayed to know what to ask that could ease

the burden of the earth on a nightbird’s journey

flying solo deeper into the dark

than even the stars or these eyeless words can go.

And I know death returns even the worst of us

to our innocence again, though our bones

come crashing down like childhood kites around us.

And the flight feathers of the aerial acrobatics

of our love lyrics run out of ink

when there’s no one in the dark

to sing for anymore, no stars

to chart where you’ve gone,

no sign from the heavens you’re not alone,

no ghost of smoke from a distant fire

I can summon to a seance of lingering desire

that would console you in the flesh again

like a candle in your solitude reaching out

to the pain of a stranger in the shadows

to make your wound cry out in bliss

as you once did from a greener bough

than this dead branch I sing from now

when we thought blossoms were the answer

to everything we didn’t understand at the time

that could befall us like fledglings in the spring

who didn’t know what autumn would bring

like an ice-storm in its wake

to things that break against the sky

like the cold-hearted lie of a window

that wasn’t open and didn’t go on forever.

And though I ask the weather for news of you,

if the wind might have heard

a word or two in passing, all

the silence does is deepen your absence

and teach me not to cling to things

like birds and flowers on the wing.

But if grief is all I can know of you now

I’ll console myself with sorrow.

I’ll hold onto it like the string of a kite

soaring among the constellations.

I won’t let go. I’ll play the line out

like a flying fish I caught in Pisces

and hauling it into a lifeboat with a net

I’ll take the hook of the moon out of your mouth

and throw you back into the depths like a muse

swimming among the stars like a siren

that keeps calling me to the rocks

like an astronaut to these mountains on the moon

I keep hurling through this earthly view

of a window from the inside out

that breaks just like the shell of a cosmic egg

unfolding a loveletter with a wingspan of light

that penetrates this dark forever

like the third eye of a needle in a haystack

of begging bowls I won’t abandon like the nests

of nightbirds with flightplans

that feather our falling into the abyss

of the unbelievable with starmaps

and the beacons of homing metaphors

that make our disappearance inconceivable.

I’ll live like the return address on an envelope

with a mouthful of silence for a voice

and wait for you to answer me again

like a songbird at the spring equinox

through a broken window in a house of pain.

And though it hurts worse when the candles go out

I’ll refuse to turn my heart away

from your reflection in everything I see.

Everything I hear and do and say.

Everything that was as true as a night sky about you.

PATRICK WHITE