* * *
When I Was a Bird
I had the smallest bones
I could breaststroke on the smooth back of evening
I had no particular anger
Sometimes I made a meal
of rain’s leftover wheat I
found certain beetles enticing, I loved fish
There was a time when I sang
to a smaller bird for days
There was a time when I pierced
the skin of a lake and left mud tracks
on asphalt
I’ve let my shadow follow other shadows
into the quicksand of night
I’ve slept among sandflies
and fallen down on the miracles of road-killed mice
After, I evolved into a mongoose
the smallest springbok of a large herd
a wildebeest, a Talaud flying fox
but I never forgot my ancestry of feather and flock
It was my best life of all
and my most successful
I was married to air
and my hatchlings followed me everywhere,
until one day they left
to marry the wind themselves
and became tree frogs and pink fairy armadillos
and little girls in Indiana, with parasols
* * *
The Waiting
Sitting by a window
peering from the heavy bone sockets
of her eyes
this is my mother
in her last days
living on nibbled lamb
and grapefruit juice
feeding the last bits of summer
to a single bird
waiting for my father
down the hall, in a separate unit
of the New York State Veteran’s Home
to come out
and greet her
which he never does
* * *
Elizabeth Cohen is a professor of English at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh and the author of eight books, most recently Birdlight and The Patron Saint of Cauliflower. Her work has appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Kalispell, River Styx, Connecticut River Review, Willawaw, Yale Review, Northwest Review, and other literary publications as well as in anthologies such as Walk On the Wild Side: Poets Write About Cities.
featured image created by Elizabeth Cohen
