“An Inheritance of Birds” by Roy Seeger

 These elegies, these days given

over to rain & geese

in migration — failures I love

to keep as evidence

like the blue dress of grief

kept by my mother & her mother

before her. The story goes,

it was the only thing

they’d wear, lace  fringe all

torn & yellowed. Each wore it soft

with her own sorrow.

They called down the songs of birds

with their sorrow. This legacy

has little to do with History

which, now that I know

its secret, I am free to change.

Roy Seeger

The Boy Whose Hands Were Birds (2008)