When she fell from the sky,
she fell from a tree
and down the stairs.
Her bone and wing broke.
A bone is composed
so we can walk
the earth like a bird.
A wing imagines walking.
She always gave us
the air, the blue
in the sky and the sea,
the green of the earth.
When bones break,
they may be set, losses
over the years must
be forgotten, but not so
with a feather or a wing.
We are not birds
to fly in triumph
over the ocean.
This morning we drove
her to her last sea—
to view the shore
to watch the waves.
All she had to give us
was she was human.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 21, Issue 3.
Paul Dickey is a poet and philosophy instructor in Omaha. Dickey’s second book of poems, Wires Over the Homeplace was published in September, 2013 by Pinyon Publishing. His first book of poems, They Say This is How Death Came Into the World was published in 2011 by Mayapple Press.
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