In memory of Forrest Bird, who saved the lives of millions

A little Bird, singing all through the night
A plastic box of green mechanicals
Its soft, subtle hiss-click there breathing life
Into and through the wreckages of boys

Americans, mostly, Vietnamese
Koreans, Cambodians, Lao, Hmong
And one who might have been a Russian (shhhhh….) -
The pretty Bird sang in their languages

And when they woke, the soft song that they heard
Was whispered to them by a little green Bird

Teddy bears ribboned to a chain-link fence,
Plastic-wrapped flowers stacked like compost,
Dime-store candles flickering in the exhaust
Of passing mini-vans.  The inanity
Of filler-language falls, descends upon
The shattered souls of the barely alive,
The dead cliches’ of well-planned camera-grief:
“Our hearts and thoughts go out to you.”
What does that mean?  Nothing but conventional noise
For generations of lovers and mourners
Long ago looted of reality,
Programmed with state-sanctioned hyperbole,
And mourners now are left with nothing but
An existential howl against the light,
Sodium-vapor upon broken glass,
While strident Men of Destiny
There rake for votes among the ashes of death.

I slipped from all formal means
And cast my heart to sea
In a little sailing ship
Just the size for me

Decorated in tiny stars
And bluebells on the bow
I travelled all the merchant seas
And came back in an hour.

Love Mary ***