My mother is an aviary
as full of light
as full of shadow.
Turquoise in summer takes rooms
by the sea to watch herring gulls, star-
billed soarers glide thermals. Riding
waves below Arcadia, Aurora, Andalusian
Dream, and Tamar Belle, the St Mawes Ferry,
workaday bones for the open ocean.
Allusions to a literary lunch
long ago, sat on a bench with Bloom’s
glass of claret and a gorgonzola sandwich.
Shouts love at the world, sees what comes
back. Friend to obdurate felines, dislikes
buttons. Likes both scones, and puffins,
enormous bills their due.
Amber in winter takes acupuncture
a fairy tap of magic to pierce the French
skin-care regimen with tiny sparking spears
and—zap—fuchsia and blue silk
and—zap—a memory
the indigo violence of falcons
tearing each other to pieces over dinner
and—zap—tears for a blithe peacock
named Percy, run over, his train of tail
stopped sailing.
My mother is an aviary
all lapis lazuli
all kingfisher blue
the feline and the feathered
find an all-weather ark. And she is my mother,
an ear on the phone and a beacon in the dark.
