worldmigratorybirdday

31d

I had known this day was set in bone.
After all, that pull to North is hollowing me, too.
But now it’s come, and all I think is grief…

—Roseanne Watt, “Migration Day”
from MODER DY (Birlinn, 2019)

Today, 11 October, is World Migratory Bird Day

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/moder-dy/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #poem #WorldMigratoryBirdDay #birds

Roseanne Watt
Migration Day

I had known this day was set in bone.
After all, that pull to North is hollowing me, too.
But now it’s come, and all I think is grief;

this feels like grief. But it’s not the flight
that can’t be followed, this being left behind
that weighs on me. Something else

is in the fields now they’ve left us;
the marshes, bereft of them, are opening
again, like skin remembering

wounds. It’s not enough to say
they will return. Something’s always lost
in leaving. And anyway, I have less

faith in such assurances these days;
like when she said she did not fear her dying,
I knew she meant the indigo

of its moment – not the increments
of losing, not how each thing would slow
into its last. The day they left

was blue, and kind and sudden.
And still, some part of me
would beg them stay.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original