POEM
The House Gift
Joanie MackowskiEgg-white house, old
ache in the rafters,
small as a button but
yearning for zero:
a sparrow parts the chimney
and veers for my face.
I wanted my nevers
again, my immaculate
touch-down to the durable
granite of love too
heavy to move: this
gift, implacable
bird's-eye sorrow
reared from the original
fairy tale's page—
I don't like it. I offered
no signature, my nature
altered, and I'm over
my hurricane. Rocking
room to room, this bird
threatens my gravity,
threaded through like a pearl
from the evening's stem.
Didn't I break all
eighty-eight bones
of my compass, my wingspan
spun from my awkwardness?
This bird returns
to the shell with monstrous
wings, wings clumsy as shovels
in a fist of dirt. It's covered
with ashes, sloughing off
cloud—caught
in my hair, brown
tumor bulged upside
down on the floor
to meet the applause:
this blessing's too
unwieldy. But open
one door, one terrible
goodbye, hello—the sparrow
flings like a shout for the trees.
Source: Poetry (November 2004).
This poem originally appeared in the November 2004 issue of Poetry.
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Joanie Mackowski’s collections of poems are The Zoo (2002) and View from a . . . MORE »
