I watch him circle the garden. Dark lashing across my window. What brings him back? He sighs. Stabs my pane. We may celebrate our lives in different ways, but we each have the same view of the slow-moving sun.
Suddenly, I don’t know why, I see his crest blaze open. The black sparrow crashes into my window and falls. Stunned. No one could love him now. What did he see through the window? Something deeper within: the egg, a lush green forest where seeds burst, the moon, a white flower touching his eye behind the glass. An illusion, no more there than a cloud.
This was not the black bird portent I witnessed; a veiled omen I was raised with, the Hellenic fairytale. A veil was lifted and I saw for the first time shame in my garden, the seed split and scattered like black confetti.
New stray, your bald cry clumsy, take your place. My dead and gone lie here. Watch the wind clean the blue sky; the sun will break and rest like a hand on your forehead.
I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me. All day I feel its feathery turnings. At my window, I hear its clumsy cry... Mother, what hit me?
Estelle Villas's poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, ByLine Magazine, and The Pedestal Magazine. She lives in Upstate New York.
