Jill Crammond

How to Bury a Bird

Always the same remedy:
one wispy feather, a dried worm, a slice of beak. 

A lover knocks on the door
at the same time
a house wren begins her nest above your porch light. 

One wispy feather tucked in your fist,
one wiry wing
folded in the family tree as you wave goodbye. 

Your love was an electrician
until he began to go blind.

Going blind. Going home. Two different fossils.
On today’s agenda, a bird, an egg, some dry grass. 

Every time you mow the lawn,
a small animal rescued. 

Your son cradles a turtle named Corona.
You are still here, one wispy feather tucked in your fist, 

one thumb curled around the skeleton of a fledgling.
Wave goodbye to the last lover 

kicked out of the nest, eyes not yet open.
When the next lover comes. 

When the egg cracks,
shells gather at your feet.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Jill Crammond’s chapbook, Handbook for Unwell Mothers, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in Slipstream, Sweet Tree Review, Limpwrist, Tinderbox Poetry, Pidgeonholes, Mother Mary Come to Me Anthology, Fiolet & Wing: An Anthology of Domestic Fabulist Poetry and others. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives and teaches art and preschool at a nature-based school in upstate NY.