by Jacqueline Coleman-Fried
after Jorie Graham
Here it comes, at last, the nightingale,
after wintering in Africa—
black eyes on fire.
Listen to me.
Listen.
You searched for me in all England’s
green patches,
but the land where Keats
wrote his great poem
has lost the low brush, the woodlands
where we nest.
Our wings
have shrunk, the journey
to sunshine and back too far, too ominous.
Why are you listening only now?
Why did you not
protect?
You didn’t notice my long,
thin beak opening wide—
O—
issuing more sounds
than any other bird.
And silence, repeated, like white
between stanzas.
Now you want to learn—
you write like you talk,
without music—
do you know I’m the bird of Ukraine?
Nation
of poets and musicians.
How many are dying? Dying every day.
Our songs call lovers,
shame all who close their ears.
And he left then,
the bird,
taking every living thing with him
in his ballooning, throbbing throat,
before I could say goodbye.
Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet living in Tuckahoe, NY. Her work as appeared in The New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, pacificREVIEW, Quartet Journal, and soon, Consequence, and HerWords Magazine.