This...

The Flight of the Robin

I returned to a last breath taken,

to a hand so warm and moist—

It could have been sleep.

In those quiet moments

before grief mushroomed up,

the morning held,

blue bright with weather

and relief.

We closed your eyes,

to a robin’s song,
trilling through the open window,

and as you traveled,

from here, to where,

we told you about him.

“Listen,” we said,

although you had no hearing,

had already lifted

into your own long flight.

Later, I sat,

while in another room

the business of mourning got on,

staring at your collarbone,

picturing the rise and fall

of your shirt, though it did not—

remembering how

in the still overnight, I’d curled

on the other bed,

listening to the phlegm

collecting in your lungs,

thinking there really is

a death rattle,  

heard you cough in

narcotic sleep,

watched you open your eyes,

to stare at the wall,

watched you close them again,

while around me,

the dim room ticked,

waiting like a clock.

Now, I picture the robin,

his call filling our ears

at the exact time you departed,

how somewhere unseen,

he would have whisked his wings,

soared on an updraft,

over the blooming dogwoods,

the purple azaleas,

how the rising sun

must have yellowed his feathers,

as he beat his way up,

into the open sky.