Jack B. Bedell

Cardinal

My wife has faith
red birds are the spirits
of our kin come back

to visit our days. They fill
the backyard all summer
after the grass has been cut,

poke around carefully
like they’re inspecting
every inch of what we

have left back there.
She sips her coffee
and watches them

through the back door glass,
doing her best to soak in
all that color.

Once, she called me
from the parking lot
at work, crying

through the phone,
when a red bird landed
right on her passenger

windowsill. She stopped
mid-sentence to send me
a picture of it. By the time

that photo popped up
on my phone, we’d both
forgotten why she’d called.

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Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s work has appeared in Southern Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Pidgeonholes, The Shore, Cotton Xenomorph, Okay Donkey, EcoTheo, The Hopper, Terrain, Kissing Dynamite and other journals. His latest collection is No Brother, This Storm (Mercer University Press, 2018). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.