In a Rainlit Voice

The news of your death called me Bird 
this morning. It spoke in a rainlit voice 
you hadn’t used for years 
before you died, so the news
of your death is making good use
of lost things. It made me sing 
a song November doesn’t think 
you even knew, made me open the door
for November to flap through, 
though you didn’t need its cold wings               
or its name. What holds me, still,
is how the news of your death 
can grab for stones you let drop                                                          
throats ago, or winds you never tried			
to touch. Where did it learn the breath 
to move in these soft places? Where 
can Bird live now in the mouth? 
In whose forgotten teeth? The news

of your death is old news, torn strips 
of Sports and Life stuffed into nest, but you                             
are young, impossibly smooth, when 
it speaks to me. You are sixteen 
on a bike, coat flapping downtown 
to the winter shops, you’re a bride 
ribboned in a brown dress, you’re brushing     
my doll’s gold hair. You are my own                           
lips, cold and folding as you tell me 
to leave for the party, my trike  
hurt-red in the windy drive and it’s time,          
there are children already singing
one house over. In that kitchen, 
some strange pink-frosted mother,
her aproned other body drifting between lit cake
and rippling streamers, will touch me
at the door. It’s time: the present
tucked in the trike’s basket and—Bird—
your mouth saying Go. The news can’t curl my hair
but you’d like it to. Your death
can’t push the pedals but my feet, Mom,
my feet are so tired.