A Lightness of Feathers Who among us hasn't broken a collarbone falling out of a tree after we climbed into a bird's nest and pretended to be an egg? The ghost of omelets gone wrong. Something with feathers condemned to a passing glance. A side table. Somewhere dust calls home. I’ll rebuild my life with doilies and photos of surgeries I’d like to have. Did I mention so-and-so died after a lifetime of regret and forced choices? Never forget your name is on someone’s Do Not Love Again list. No matter how you measure it, you’ll never have what you’ve lost again. Another name for insouciance. At least you’re not the kind of bird that kicks the other eggs out of the nest when you settle in. It’s the small victories keep us going and coming. That’s how they get you. I don’t even know what kind of tree it was.
About the Author: Raised on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas, CL Bledsoe is the author of more than thirty books, including the poetry collections Riceland, The Bottle Episode, and his newest, Having a Baby to Save a Marriage, as well as his latest novels Goodbye, Mr. Lonely and The Saviors. Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.
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Image Credit: Public domain image originally published in Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, London : Academic Press. Image courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library
As It Ought To Be 