blackbird lamentation

on my sixty-seventh birthday i stand in the middle of a cornfield

and pry my ribcage open with two sharp rocks.

there are birds between my lungs, made mad

by wombs of semi-dark, never having learned

to fly, never having sung except

as the world lie sleeping.

these bodies falling out of my body,

tired bodies, feeble and hollow-boned,

and my body becoming the empty church,

shedding sins like snakeskin, trailing past long and heavy.

it begins to rain, so i will drown soon, and look, the birds like oil spills

slick slick slick in the water, and the black swan dancers preparing my funeral song.

i remember my mother and the way she always told me not to get caught in the rain.

i remember the way she took a blackbird hungry, cold, from a storm,

and perched him on her shoulder. the birds at my feet begin to sing

in the downpour, calm and low, a song about light emerging

from the darkness of the throat. they don’t know how to fight

but they do it anyway. our bones shake with the hymnal.

war prayer. church blessing. filling and hungry.

it’s the kind of melody that sounds like a lover’s voice

beside you in bed in the middle of a dream about drowning.