My Inner Bird

Original artwork by Marion Syme

for Clayoquot Eclectic

My inner bird is, perhaps,
the raven with her gobble-cry,
or maybe the cheep of a small sparrow.
Perhaps a mourning dove.

How many times can the heart break?
As many times as are required of us.
I turn on the news.
The young are rising.
Thank God.

Children are still dying.
There was Sandy Hook one Christmas;
now it is years later
and the children are still dying.
How are we adults to bear
the world we have created
for the young?

My inner bird must be
a tough old bird,
because we’re still here,
still outraged,
and our hearts still fire with hope
when the young raise their voices
and speak their painful truth
- our painful truth -
to corrupt power.

My inner bird
shrieks with a pain
I cannot release
for fear the walls will tumble.
All identifiable walls have tumbled
but, thankfully,
there is cement and mortar,
and willing hands
to help us
build them up again.

For Kerry’s prompt at Real Toads: to write a poem as a one-sided conversation to a disinterested audience. The governmental audience is certainly disinterested, in anything but their own agenda.

Also shared with the Poetry Pantry at Poets United.