Your sister is dead.
We plant seedlings
by her grave in April,
when Spring seduces
with all its promise,
moisten the ground
with a jug of water
and say how, years from now,
a bush will burst and flower,
be home to a family of sparrows,
each knowing the other by name.
I ask you if birds have names,
like Alice, Brent, Jessica and James,
if mother and father bird
call them in when it rains,
say settle here in branches
amid the leaves that keep you dry –
not in English, mind you,
or any other human tongue
but in the language of sparrows;
each trill, each warbling,
a repartee,
a crafted conversation of the minds.
I then notice that we never see the birds when it rains, how they disappear in downpours, seeking shelter in something we simply cannot see. When we’re old, when we come to remember the loved one that you’ve lost, they’ll be shielded in our shrub, not a short and stunted one, but a grand, blessed growth, like the one that spoke to Moses, aflame, uttering I AM WHO I AM, one that towers, dense with green, a monument
to the sister you treasured and to the birds that she adored, naming the formerly fallowed, hallowed, sacred, remove your shoes, Spirits and Sparrows dwell and sibilate secrets we’re unworthy to hear.
Andreas Gripp
Andreas Gripp