birdsong lovesong

how the birds have awakened in me
the spring that brought them home
and reminded me to sing my song
not because i can nor i should
but because we all carry songs

raise your right hand, swear
allegiance to the flag
of my tongue, my heart
sing your gloria sing
the mermaid's song

neither fish nor woman
still her scales shine
pentatonic in the dawn
wreck yourself upon my
rocks each sailors son

or gentler than clouds
cerulean seas do swell
crescendo on my beach
launch your vessel
from this shore

until we sing
no more

Adam Shtibel, Child Holocaust Survivor

our town became the ghetto, our own home our new prison
and before my father died of typhus
he and the neighbour built a hiding-closet

when the Gestapo came to round us up
- close enough i could hear them shouting, the bark
of their German Shepherd - i was twelve years old

and my mother told me to hurry and join my neighbour
in the closet, there was room enough only for two. the voices
became louder and i became not boy, neither man, but still dutiful son

and pushed her in, singing the lock home before running
to the square. i slipped away, and we all lived together
a while longer but eventually she and my older brother

were caught and died in Bergen-Belsen, became smoke and ash
as they say. i was caught stealing food and lied, said i was
a Polish Christian boy who had been orphaned, and they sent me

to a work-camp, where eventually a farmer took me home. even after
the war ended i never admitted who i was until one day another farmer
guessed. that farmer and his wife knew and protected me, i think perhaps

but in any case i went to the capital and was given schooling and money
and became a fighter pilot for Poland at the age of 17. i met my wife
quite by accident when i wrote the address of a friend down wrong and

she showed me around her city. she and another child and eight adults
had spent two years in a small hole dug in a barn floor. we have been
very happy together. i only wish my mother might have stayed hidden.

MIA

forehead pressed against car window
the night sky spelled words I couldn't yet read
shooting stars warning how fast it would all pass
one blurred yellow highway line, one "quick make a wish" at a time

as suns burnt out like sparklers a million light-years away
and meteors evaporated in the atmosphere, unanswered questions
skipping stones in that black pond above
I imagined what it would be like to watch the night sky with an imagined you

someone who could decode the constellations and tell me the stories
I had to tell myself to dream back what was lost
scattered stars pulsing distant light
thin-stretching skin of the universe holding us in its pores

I look for you still, alone, and
starfucked by a galaxy of ticks at the end of this spring day
I tweeze them off pitiless, find you in the obscured crescent moon, in the magnificence
of drowned dragonflies, undancing on twigs in a star-shot summer

Prophet Elijah

eagle feather aloft

after too many years hurtling down the tracks

you found brakes for that Great White Train


remember that this land belongs to itself

and we all live upon it, but some of us

have been here a millenia longer


and object to this

S.S. colonial enterprise

twelve days you held that feather


many days longer than Moses

and nobody to prop your arms

just what floated that eagle


prayers

rising

upwards

misaskwatomin

this is how you misaskwatomin
(don't Saskatoonie me though I'm twice the loonie
to be born here and then move back to stay)

five-pointed day-glow star
ripening in sun to a constellation
of tiny purple moons orbiting the bush

kohkums pointing with lips because hands were busy
and didn't want to give offence, anyway
"don't forget to leave some for the birds"

if only the winged ones showed the same consideration
for us purple-hungering
two-leggeds

holding the space

Twenty years old was too young for you to full-time mom, you said.

"I want to be the best mom, not just a good one. Good moms do hard things."

You quit the job you loved,

stretch-markingly lost your 32 inch waist for 36 weeks,

went into labour watching a movie with your dad,

were c-sectioned because otherwise you both died

pumped milk in NICU

and chose a matching set of parents who would double you.

Because at twenty you were wiser than many, and you knew this would be

the hardest choice

for the best life for both.

I told you heroes don't feel like heroes

and your silence agreed, heroically.

repping the west...

I thought I might take a year off May Day. But I am going to maybe post a bit anyway. I am doing a number of heavy things right now and won't have much time to participate as I usually do. I might try and catch up in June, particularly in the best part (reading! commenting!) - but for now a quick 'ello. A wave. A kiss on each cheek. ~ andie.