Red Wing Blackbird
by Cherie Bullock

    1

    The sixth of January,
    the cat and I rose

    early near the lithesome body
    of a grief-sung man,
    basket of slits, thatch
    withered, softwood
    thatch unfinished, nothing

    in his body is formed
    or growing old.

    2

    I know a face that's leaving,
    nothing else in his restraint,
    nothing else here--only his face
    that's wooden--mumbling
    about streets getting back,
    that's gone. He gave
    a cough, sat up, breathed
    a pill -- a suffer-- a word of omen
    that these hands may yet seem
    to lay, to foot in the bush
    of tears, lying about in a white
    coarse linen and sleeping

    under an old house,
    black awning--roof
    shallowed.






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