Why to Bury a Parrot

When I slow for the fox crossing Grove Street

outside the house the Jehovahs hole up in

I nearly follow its wounds—

the white of its tail dimming a light

through water, through wood.

I ease off the brake, roll Grove’s hill

to the stoplight, and turn toward those cliffs

where I dropped my bird in a jewelry box,

still singing. It was winter then, ice tilting,

ice swaying like buoys between black rock.

Never was a winged thing so willing to be caged.

When the sky was a circling hawk, a human hand

brighter than sun. Escape as foreign as the perch

of a tree. This morning, fog closing down

around the cove where the birdsong stopped,

I consider my own cargo-bay doors,

the ship in each of us sinking. The breath-held

moments when that box just hung there

knocking its wood against ice. I would dive

through water so cold the dead never rise,

water foxhole dark, and try to stay under,

to follow that silver latch rusting at rock bottom.

I would unclasp its hymns, all those blinding notes,

but this woman’s body, this broken clay jar

is not meant to level such pressure.