Gold Bird
The garden’s a drunk,
rolling in weeds and spending
April’s cash, wild potatoes
spreading leaves for a sky
about to rain again. Then
you, bird—low in the bushes,
bright like a bit of gilding
at the corner of a dark page.
I don’t know what to call you:
Transformer dragonfly, glass
bee. Indoors, it’s been
the same book over and over,
droning a list of the undesired.
But then a glimpse through
the window—your chest
so bright it nearly made
a sound. I thought maybe
you’d stay or, dreamlike, return
as my cousin or David Bowie
with news from over there.
Symbols are a tyranny.
All you are is upside down,
hammering on a branch.
Then firefly blur—
unreal, your flash in daylight just
as the rain begins dissolving—
your light now out of the frame
and over the fence.
rolling in weeds and spending
April’s cash, wild potatoes
spreading leaves for a sky
about to rain again. Then
you, bird—low in the bushes,
bright like a bit of gilding
at the corner of a dark page.
I don’t know what to call you:
Transformer dragonfly, glass
bee. Indoors, it’s been
the same book over and over,
droning a list of the undesired.
But then a glimpse through
the window—your chest
so bright it nearly made
a sound. I thought maybe
you’d stay or, dreamlike, return
as my cousin or David Bowie
with news from over there.
Symbols are a tyranny.
All you are is upside down,
hammering on a branch.
Then firefly blur—
unreal, your flash in daylight just
as the rain begins dissolving—
your light now out of the frame
and over the fence.
Sept / Oct 2023
Amy Miller’s poetry has appeared in Barrow Street, Copper Nickel, RHINO, Terrain, Tupelo Quarterly, West Trestle Review, and ZYZZYVA. Her books include Astronauts, which won the Chad Walsh Chapbook Prize from Beloit Poetry Journal and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, and The Trouble with New England Girls, which won the Louis Award from Concrete Wolf. She lives in Ashland, Oregon.
Art: Cam Pietralunga. Space Cadet Scrimmage. Acrylic on canvas.