Jim NawrockiThis bowl must have been hanging in its tree
above the cars and parking meters, above men
wrapped like pods and sleeping in doorways,
above the coffee cup lids, newsprint cubism, and
the quintillion cigarette remnants of sidewalk still life.
And now it’s underfoot, a sudden flash on wet pavement,
its woven twig wreath exploded out, but
still holding its circle, like some ring nebula
in a false-color photo of the stars.
This is not the universe as it is.
So here’s an ignorance corrected into a kind of grief.
Its curve has spread, its center has opened
to cradle nothing, but two (or is it three?) ivory shells,
now shattered in the way all ruin is final and uncertain,
the yolks a perverse sun painted on the rained-on street.
And these men whose faces I never see sleep on as I pass,
and dream in ways the rest of us do,
of colors we forget could be the sun,
of the place beyond maps and cities, invisible lines,
where birds still follow their ancient path.
Comments
Bruce, thank you for your kind words and your thoughtful reading of my poem. I'm very glad you enjoyed it and I appreciate your taking the time to share some of your thoughts.
"A Fallen Bird's Nest" by Jim Nowroki is heart-tugging, true to life, and poignantly beautiful. A fallen bird's nest with nurtured eggs, gifts from God, now spilled on sidewalk where people walk and spit mostly unmidful of shattered hope in broken eggs and shattered home - that nest torn apart like so many a human nest in "Sandy" - and that Mother Bird, what is she to do now? Weep and wonder!
Once on a rainswept NYC sidewalk I saw a newly hatched baby bird, tranquil in death, its body like a human fetus tossed as garbage, but a little feathered with promise that would never be. It's wings limp, its tiny feet curled in a lifeless bend, its body pinkish blue. I moved it to a place where hurrying feet would not crush it and where it could quietly return to the soil where earth worms it would never seek clapped vtheir hands happily, but with some sadness realizing that someday they may find a similar end, or perhaps more graciously as food for some hungry fish!
Fallen bird's nest, tiny broken eggs, fallen baby bird, one consolation in the words of Jesus, "Not even one Sparrow falls with your heavenly Father knowing it." All creatures big and small and their homes, praise the Lord!