more semi-baked poems.

i)

waves of waxwings
wind & disperse
across treetops,
the beating of their wings
like windblown snow;

embroidering the city sky
with a swooping language,
fluid black flecks, woven

& moving over a
page of whiteness,

confusing me as to
the syntax
of the deceased.

your baba was, they say, she
was a good cook, good mother
good dancer she was so good
but
i can’t say it like that,
this was,
this were,
when she still
is;

realis, irrealis.
dead is not alive,
but that doesn’t negate the
fact you existed. it
proves it.

so death is not was;
death is just forgetfulness.

like the waxwings migrate, repeat
their soft sreeeeing call
over and over --
they’ve flown
for as long as they can remember,
they will fly as long as those wings
breed memory.

i cannot use the past
perfective for someone
who is still living for me,
for dying did not render you
not my grandmother.

ii)

& i want to believe in the semantics
of small miracles,
like faces in birchbark,
a voice heard in my sleep.

like the lone bird
who came to us, came to me
in a dream sealed by the
tail of the bird in flight, gold wax
dripping into my eyes,

the light in her face, her soft hands
when she said,
ty duzhe dobre, oh, you are doing so good!

there is no was. she is ever
my grandmother, not irrealis.

but real & migrating
like small birds
that come in a waxwing cloud,
alight suddenly, embroider

themselves dark into the pale
sky of the heart, then
move on.