Dear Stars
From his second grade teacher,
my nephew learns about hieroglyphs,
scrawls from another country and era.
He likes the ones with wings.
“A is a bird,” he says.
“Lots of hieroglyphs are birds.”
Neither time nor place
can change our desire
to see words take flight,
feathered utterances
in a blue expanse of sky,
language turned to ibis and gull.
When he speaks of canabic jars,
I imagine women writing with kohl
on their own faces.
“C is a cup tilted sideways
with tea pouring out.”
Yes, the pouring in, holding heat,
letting go.
He draws a tomb and pyramids,
remembers more: M is an owl.
Cryptic, stormy predator
my mother keeps writing
from spirit world to my own,
hooting in its tree off Hadaway Road.
M for Mary, cosmic love letter
from my daughter’s namesake
flying past the Japanese maple
we planted after she died.
Dear stars, forgive me how much
I comb my child’s long hair,
the color of each good sunset,
its silk in my grip,
her every sound a dove
cupped in hand,
carved into the mountains around us,
bird heartbeat in my palms.
Feathers everywhere I go.