Bird

 

I set my alarm by an inner dove,

wake to crows.

 

Wherever the jay flies

my sparrows come after.

 

But above the jittery sandpiper,

a petrel with a beach of wing

 

is an intimate of the sun, single robin on the skylawn,

never flocking with the starlings,

 

singular and steady—planet light, hawk gaze,

heron waiting on the fishrise.

 

Within that silence find love even for the carrion birds—

vulture, raven, gull.

***

Kim Garcia is the author of The Brighter House, winner of the 2015 White Pine Press Poetry Prize, DRONE, winner of the 2015 Backwaters Prize, and Madonna Magdalene, released by Turning Point Books in 2006. Her chapbook Tales of the Sisters won the 2015 Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Chapbook Contest. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Crab Orchard Review, Crazyhorse, Mississippi Review, Nimrod and Subtropics, and her work has been featured on The Writer’s Almanac. Recipient of the 2014 Lynda Hull Memorial Prize, an AWP Intro Writing Award, a Hambidge Fellowship and an Oregon Individual Artist Grant, Garcia teaches creative writing at Boston College.
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