Absent Warning

July 7, 2020

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.

Three billion birds have been lost in North America since 1970
[National Geographic]

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