The Picnic
Set up like dolls,
the girls wander out on the fields
then free fall into the venture.
Casting each other wide looks
as they walk,
as they wander like dolls in formation.
Silly giggles
and giddy running
all pointless, spontaneous and
full. She stops and looks down, the oldest, and stops running.
Stops dead.
The bird twitches and fades,
twitches and fades.
Slowly.
They gather around like priests,
still and sober. The bird twitches
and fades. It is nearly dead.
The oldest asks the youngest to look away.
But none of them can.
Silent with the privilege of history's great witnesses
they record the bird's last twitch.
Someone suggests they ought to bury it,
no one remembers who. But they don't have the heart.
The fields stretch before them as they drift
like sages back over their steps. Clouds cast patches of darkness
in long, slow waves. They drift alone together.
And the oldest keeps looking back
over her shoulder. Past the trampled grass
that marks the bird's final resting place, and to the trees beyond.
And to the other places they never went.
Poetry by Blue River
Read 564 times
Written on 2009-02-09 at 13:01
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