Danielle Kerese, The Bird In The Ambulance, 2020
Stained glass (Artist Website)
It sings in its pain
Does not wail but sings upending
The stretcher and with its beak removes
The sutures from the woman bleeding
The woman shouting
My bird has escaped from me
My sweet bird go where you belong
Back into my sad heart newly failing
Without you singing in it my bird
And the emergency medical technicians
Holding hands from the fear of a woman
Proclaiming her insides a bird
Refusing treatment wanting only to sing
While watching this and doing nothing
One says never have I taken from myself
A bird never has anything come from me
The other says yes the truth is I am not
Made from a singing inner bird my only
Composition is that of saltwater
That no one would like to drink
No no one could drink me without
Further dehydration further decomposition
And the emergency medical technicians
Holding hands and holding one another
And wondering how ever to heal
This singing woman this singing bird
When neither sings a blood song
Neither sings a sad death song
Never sings oh my ruin oh my remaining
Want to love oh my remaining
Need to love because instead what fills
The ambulance is innumerable song
The lights flashing the color of emergency
All over everything and the wailing
Not of a bird escaped from a person and trapped
In a moving room but the wailing
That says we are all in here a few creatures
All similar in our confusion because of pain
Where to display what we feel
On hands or wings or something else
We can ruin with beaks or teeth these sutures
These coverings that no one needs
And the emergency medical technicians
Say yes bird your destruction
We will all remove the things that cover
Our respective injuries so everyone can see
The joy we know to be hurt
Say I will find a way to remove from myself
A bird that does not need to understand
Love or destruction only to sing
Say my wonderful saltwater belongs
Inside you and me and everything
And the burning will be of healing
They sing how full of wonder it is
To release everything in another kind
Of bleeding and the ambulance is wailing
But the bird in the ambulance sings in its pain
And the best thing about birds
Is they never know when to stop