Picture Book of Tears as Birds
On page one, they whistle
like warblers, slide down
the riverbank of a face.
Next, The Crying Café
filled with swans,
their lake, a bowl of weeping tea.
Why do crows swagger warnings steal
feelings like marbles
to stash in branches?
Page four: a mourning dove
flown under the eaves
on my birthday as omen:
Either smoke filled underworlds,
or a chance for redemption,
a beak dressed in green.
Next, eiderdown on wet cheeks,
freely given
by mother ducks.
A cloud of cardinals,
funeral shadows
plumped in red plumage, page eight.
Flip to my robin wings
over russet belly, shuttered,
poised on the dry fountain.
The floodgates, let them display
day and night like the hand lettered sign
on The Crying Café:
This place Open for grief, Open for love.
Or winging for love that never was there.
On the last page a stone, a gem inside.
To open takes enchantment, takes a beak, a claw.
About the Author: Phyllis Klein is a psychotherapist and poet from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including The Comstock Review, Sweet, 3Elements, I-70, The Minnesota Review, and Swwim Everyday, among many others. She was a finalist in the Sweet Poetry Contest, 2017, the Carolyn Forche Humanitarian Poetry Contest, 2019, and the Fischer Prize, 2019. Her book, The Full Moon Herald, from Grayson Books (2020), has won poetry finalist from the Eric Hoffer Book Award, 2021. During the Pandemic she started a reading called Poets in Conversation.
Image Credit: W. A . Blakston “Cardinals,Virginian Nightingale” (1878) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee.
As It Ought To Be 