Sitting under a tree in my back yard
Suddenly the wind how it blew~
And in front of me fell a small nest
With in it a baby bird part light blue~
I picked it up gently
With baby still within~
Placed it up on a water tank
Protected by a bin~
Twenty minutes past by
And a Robin flew down
To the nest and the baby
And she flew around and around~
The next day I returned there
To where I sat under that tree~
And a Robin and her baby
Flew around and around me~
She sang to me for a good while
With her baby in tow~
Singing the sweetest of songs
Her baby now safe to let me know~
I thought she'd never leave there
As she stayed and she sung~
To me for saving her baby
Thanking me for deeds done~
A beautiful Robin
Gods creature so small~
How she demonstrated appreciation
How blessed I felt and all~
The heart of a Robin
The love for her own~
She came back to thank me
For saving her own~

Terrence Michael Sutton
Copyright 2018

Drifting off in mid-day
She is there in my parent's house
Where she should not be
She's never met them
been inside their home

...and besides
She's dead...

Don't know where I drop my brains off
or my heart
when sleeping
I so clearly know this
but I dismiss it
for the moment--
go along with joy
to have her with me once again

She looks so well!
Her pale skin flushed
below her ragged, reddish hair
Wearing peacock blue sateen
as always
dressed to ****
to go somewhere
anywhere
away
from loneliness
from cancer

...and she had included me
on her glorious outing
without title
without honor
I had been her teacher-friend
like an elder wedding guest
she had grown
beyond ...

She helps me dump my canvas bag of poems
on my parent's bed
Where I conceived them
or they conceived me

“What about this one?
Or this is a good one too!
I know you can do this!
You read so well!”
she says
I'm thinking, “This is not like Jenn,
so reversed
for her to give a thought...
and besides, it is not even my event!"

Now she's in my mother's place
in her 1950's closet
pushing hangers across the rail
She would find it--
something
I could wear

I am so transported by the smell
of memories
that I don't care
mothballs, lavender, perfume
I get distracted deep within
almost losing track in the euphoria
to have found my friend again
I lose a moment in the soft fur of mom's mink
clipped together mouth to tail
to form the stole
an ouroboros
With its beady eyes
on me
like death
would drape across my shoulders
given half a chance

When from its mouth of glamorous lies....
Jenn shoves me through life's opened door
She has found that dress!
I wore...

the one with hope, and future's
purple flowers
dropped waist and scalloped neck
Yes, It would do, “Yes!"

But now,
she makes excuse to leave
...of meeting Joe
...of going on ahead...

I know
she must

as this is all some clabbered past
a gift of dreams
Still, I want to hug her
just one last....

but she feels empty...

In embrace
she turns to ash

An early evening gust
broke the back of the day's blaze
Still 90 degrees at eight
in orange haze
Sweat runs down my neck
Through the gorge between my *******
The wind lifts my linen shirt
runs its hands along my sides
reviving memory
of Forest Park
of a blanket in the grass

Where the pines trace
so many faces
Crackling popping kids
stolen matches, running
screaming victorious!
Blowing tin cans up with fire crackers
Bicycles, sparklers, fireworks at dusk
That whole afternoon
I spent hammering caps

Noise really makes us kids
really
especially
annoying

Mom wants us out!
Gone! All of us!
No needs. No excuses!
No cookies! No slices of bologna!
“No more Kool Aid!
Out now!
Out!”

That evening I tried
to dismiss the itchy sweat
of stupid-sister-Suzy-matching-sun-suits
at Gino's family picnic
When some kid
(I don't know?)
between the rigatoni and the sweet corn
Some kid
tosses a sparkler
into box of fireworks
I don't know?
whether to cry or laugh
I was pretty scared
Rockets going off across the lawn
and onto porch
Craze of colors through the trees
Some at eye-level horror!
But the sight of Aunt Nedda
diving under picnic table
Stockings, garter belt upended
Capsized beyond her caring
of uplifted dress

Some images just stay with you, ya know?

July 4th always lands for me
on a firework's ***

I am not reading poetry.
I am cupping the words
in my hands, pouring them
over my head, rubbing them
through my skin, into my bones
breathing in
breathing out

becoming a poem

Ten years ago tonight
we were watching
our mother die.


The bedroom -  with her
beloved blue shutters -
littered with used
medical equipment

her low moans.

Someone inside me
remembers the stench
of cancer

Now  her three daughters
stand in a triangle with
our backs turned -


and no one says a word.