and in the poem we search for the birds

jason b. crawford

you must understand how peculiar this is to me

that they are not present; i have read this cover to cover

and could not find them; licked each page and still

i missed their song vibrating my eardrums. i found

the wildflowers; their tall-stemmed backs greeting me

softly like smooth slide of hands between beloveds

that haven’t seen each other in far too many nights; the bees

are there, too, giant in their buzzing around my head, sounding

like the blades of my barber who has missed many moons

of me since i started shaving my own head. even

the crickets sat with me in the meadow, sharing

stories about past lives with loves and the gardens

we could find them buried under, but the hummingbirds

that mate in the stalks of gardenias remained hidden. i must ask

what calls the sun every morning if not the rooster’s greed? who questions

love’s fate better than the doves? how do we write a poem

about a surviving people and forget to name them at all?

i’m not saying i miss their beauty because it is absent

everywhere; i just mean whenever i notice they’re missing,

it becomes a new forever without them; you can never have too many

trees or friends to help devour the tail ends of your birthday

cake or cheese danishes or lonely nights that shadow across your empty

living rooms; and yes this is a poem again about friends and how

sometimes there is a river between us we tread until our heron-hearts meet

at the creek that connects to a large maple tree in michigan. i see

its branches full to its fingers with leaves. i see its fruit, plentiful

for a thirst covered mouth. i see this all, the birds, too, are there

if you listen close enough.