by Jacqueline Coleman-Fried
after Jorie Graham
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Here it comes, at last, the nightingale, after wintering in Africa— black eyes on fire. Listen to me. Listen. You searched for me in all England’s green patches, but the land where Keats wrote his great poem has lost the low brush, the woodlands where we nest. Our wings have shrunk, the journey to sunshine and back too far, too ominous. Why are you listening only now? Why did you not protect? You didn’t notice my long, thin beak opening wide— O— issuing more sounds than any other bird. And silence, repeated, like white between stanzas. Now you want to learn— you write like you talk, without music— do you know I’m the bird of Ukraine? Nation of poets and musicians. How many are dying? Dying every day. Our songs call lovers, shame all who close their ears. And he left then, the bird, taking every living thing with him in his ballooning, throbbing throat, before I could say goodbye.
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Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet living in Tuckahoe, NY. Her work as appeared in The New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, pacificREVIEW, Quartet Journal, and soon, Consequence, and HerWords Magazine.
Beautiful sad poem
Humans seem to be too late with every aspect of our environment.