Moving day

On the day before the move
I sent Aaron out into the world
to empty the basement of old water jugs
(stored up, proof against thirst)
into the most parched of the grass.
Shy and queasy with uncertain future
he ventured out on the adult side
of his sometimes rational, sometimes
mouth-open squeaking yearning
ten-year-old mind.

In the backyard, his doomed domain,
he found that our birdhouse construction project,
perched askance in the tree that had grown
parallel with him
had finally filled with tweets and twitters.
Just in time to mourn the emptiness
that would fill our old familiar places soon!
I supposed, though I doubt he
thinks in such convoluted ways.

But there on the perpendicular ground he found
the cruel back of an escaping cat
and a baby bird, mangled and red
heaving with the effort of more young life.
It had a yellow mouth and broken brown body
and shuddered in agony.

Maybe it was that he felt some kinship,
torn from his life for reasons understood
but not accepted,
or maybe compassion just runs rich in him.
But he latched onto that small drama
and chose to defy its course.

I saw the writing on the wall
of the shoebox that became its intensive care unit,
carpeted and padded with yesterday’s news
to ease its travail.
Doc Marten had written there for some frivolity,
“broad short wings can escape trouble
with a rocketlike departure
but have low flying endurance,”
and the irony was like a knife in my
already tenderized heart.

I spoke to him of nature’s way, and a billion-year’s
litany of suffering and cycling,
and change, so unavoidable, the only
thing unchanging. I revealed that sometimes
a human helps a deeply broken animal die,
and how a rocketlike combustion might
furnish a poison to help his strange little friend
with the yellow mouth and crooked brown wing
escape into needed, though endless sleep.

He balked to see kindness wear a killer’s mask.
I held him as he lamented the injustice of this
world in which he’s stuck,
and the feeling of falling from the nest,
and losing his home.

To myself I added further thoughts on these hard,
hardening acts inflicted upon loved ones for their good,
despite insistent protestations, despite fear,
for impermanence like cats will always be near
and cried a big wet tear, though never did I let it
betray decorum or cross the threshold of my lid.

Our bird ate a few crumbs and a moth
(complicit with nature’s ritual to the end)
and though he seemed about to mend
and sang a lonesome evening song,
by moving day’s dawn he was gone
without ever a need for
my fumbling human intervention.

We gave the precious body to the soil,
though Aaron retreated from the task.
I was all too glad to take up his shovel.
Then we got busy, heaving and hauling.
Moving, always moving.
Vacating the past for the long slow tumble
into future.