The First Bird
BY DIDI JACKSON
The first bird I see in the brand-new year
is a chickadee, and according to birders
it is now my theme bird, industrious, curious,
no jukebox of melody but instead a 2 or 3 note
simple song, the dropped tones of hey sweetie
outside the window to the bedroom where we rest
a moment, naked, our desire rooting us to each other,
our ankles like anchors, your coined eyes
on my Willendorf figure, my freckles
like splashes of sweet vermouth. It is winter and the heat
of the room tricks us into cracking a window
to allow the smallest ribbon of sunshine to touch
the bed, then to move across your face
like a honeyed blessing. I know the days
of the calendar itch like fledglings, each at the lip
of their nest, ready for flight; and that your parents
told you not to wish your life away,
but how esoteric of them, the old, though now
we are the age they were. Lip to lip. Nose to nose.
Belly to belly. And on this cold day, I want
to eat you. Yes. An excoriation of your body
in the manner of the eucharist.
For if you become part of me, then I will know
and carry all of your suffering, and you mine.
The Bell
BY DIDI JACKSON
Near the end of the day
the chickadees never hesitate to scold
my entrance from the trail into Flanders Field.
I take their flush and feather,
tick them off with the last shards of sun
and the skeletal underside of a cloudless sky.
The mountains begin to silhouette not knowing the names
of the dead profiles they resemble. I am
hypnotized by the sunlight. It is dusk
that changes what I think I see
into what is. And when I read the word lost
I read Lota, Bishop’s partner
who like my own husband took her life. And there
I go, once again nailed by the starving sky and the tack-sharp pines
to this story despite the dying day,
despite wanting to forget the dead
and instead dwell on what I might offer the world,
despite turning from the recently mowed meadow
of milkweed and curled dock, the empty crabapple trees
and their black scowling boughs,
to head back down the path, book in my arms,
swallowing a scream clanging like a bell in my throat.
