What if I told you the space between us
is the measure of one bird to the next,
the span of morning call
to answering chirp, wing rush to nest
in the maple, a glide to the apricot tree,
a hum rising above the bougainvillea.
Yet any home within a home is a glass orb
held softly on fingertips: a listless hand
drops dearness down for the shattering.
Have you seen the invisibility, the thinning
of the wings? The widening gaps, the mornings
quieter by three billion beaks? Wake up
to dawn without the chorus, melodies muted.
Open your eyes to blank boughs, badlands
swelling between us, how we vanish feathers
by the terrible power of our unseeing.
—
Laura Reece Hogan is the author of O Garden-Dweller (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and I Live, No Longer I (Wipf & Stock, 2017). Her poems appear in America, Whale Road Review, The Cresset, The Windhover, the anthology In a Strange Land (Cascade, 2019) and elsewhere.
