fly, little swallow

seeing her: a stillness
lay across me supine
as the shadow of a tree, one breath

said the earthbound nurse, & she lay there,
still singing –

her mouth open, peaceful
holding an endless note:

shhhhh
a little swallow is leaving,
leaving her body empty,
escaping from a mouth

chapped like a knothole
in crumbling birchbark,
emerging

through the clouds flowing
like wax through the hole blown
in a pysanka, decreating

snowy light into a sky blue
as her closed eyes, behind her lids filled
with the smoky nebulae of night –

vidlitai, lastivochko!*
meteor streaking
into the folding arms of the pleiades,

leaving a tree to burn
joyfully, turning me into ashes,
the earth –

[november 27th, 2005]

*=fly, little swallow

***

"Anna's ghost all around / Hear her voice as it's rolling and ringing through me /Soft and sweet / How the notes all bend and reach above the trees..." -- In an Aeroplane Over the Sea, by Jeff Mangum (Neutral Milk Hotel)