There are Birds Here
for Detroit
There are birds here,
so many birds here
is what I was trying to say
when they said those birds were metaphors
for what is trapped
between buildings
and buildings. No.
The birds are here
to root around for bread
the girl’s hands tear
and toss like confetti. No,
I don’t mean the bread is torn like cotton,
I said confetti, and no
not the confetti
a tank can make of a building.
I mean the confetti
a boy can’t stop smiling about
and no his smile isn’t much
like a skeleton at all. And no
his neighborhood is not like a war zone.
I am trying to say
his neighborhood
is as tattered and feathered
as anything else,
as shadow pierced by sun
and light parted
by shadow-dance as anything else,
but they won’t stop saying
how lovely the ruins,
how ruined the lovely
children must be in that birdless city.
—Jamaal May
I found this poem two years ago in the anthology How Lovely the Ruins, and it has echoed in my head periodically ever since. May’s words, though they speak of a different kind of terror, seem apt for this current moment. We are all tattered, right now, and yet there is also “shadow pierced by sun.”
I hope you’re keeping well, friends.
(I usually share poetry here on Fridays during April, which is National Poetry Month, but I decided to start early this year.)
