Blackbird

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I loved  your darkness, Blackbird, Beauty, singing in the dead of night*, soaring / captive, caught somewhere between the earth and sky. I saw your beauty plain. And I am remembering, remembering, again. I wanted to love you into the sun, release your pain. How your dark eyes smiled the morning you pulled a string that opened the curtains across the room into the sunny morning, and I caught my breath with delight! Your eyes, smiling at me, as a bird flew across the greenhouse and landed on your hand. You gifted me with doves, whose soft coo gentled our awakenings that short year of our loving. One dove was captured and killed by the cat. A portent.  I knew I would love you forever. But you could not commit to only one, when there were so many beautiful birds in the sky. Your eyes, if not your heart, had wings. When I told you I was leaving, you reached over, opened the door of the lonely dove's cage, and off she flew. (Forever circling, ever circling back to you, if you but knew.) I was to remain a solitary dove, still tethered to your name.

Blackbird, captive heart,
who so wanted to fly free,
do you think of me?


a haibun for  Toni's prompt at dVerse : A Little Romance *quote from the famous song that always takes me back to those days. We had five teenagers between us, none of them on board with our being together,  another significant factor in my leaving.