Rebecca Cross, from the series Untied in 19 Pieces, 2015 (Artist Website)
Silk, dyes
The hawk flew so close the air shocked my eyes to her wings,
broad as a beam over down-pressed claws, where the legs
and tail of a chipmunk churned across emptiness. Alcoved
in spring green, she pecked, stomped, glared, and shimmied
back into sky. Travertine wingspan, dark thing flapping.
It happened the week of your twenty-third birthday. Capture
eludes me, its stealth and precision, but I know the creature
hanging in the talons now, how wild the bird’s eyes behind leaves.
Oh, did you love birds, Simon. A wing in each hand,
birdsong, flight sounds, soft landings in piles.
And that Christmas we’d just found out you were sick,
how you put the little woven ribbon birds on the tree,
everywhere what needs a bird. Why can’t I picture you
grown? Sixteen years ago you turned seven. The hawk
flew off like it was nothing, and I watched almost as if
it was nothing. Can you believe I’m nearing sixty?
In a place you never knew? I’m in charge of the birds,
you said, like God is, the first morning of chemo.
Days after the hawk, I set off to find the spot again. Vanished.
No branch has memory’s distance and density. We baked
another cake this year, watched A Bug’s Life, with outtakes.
When will we let you grow up and leave? Your eyes
come to me, brown-flecked and light-filled, more determined
than the hawk’s. But the vision is brittle. I have you only where
photography holds you. Because I carried the cake. That’s my torso
behind you. I didn’t see you, skinny-armed in your tank top,
lips, cheeks, eyelids, brow, and the narrow tube beneath
the skin of your neck, straining to blow out your seven candles.