BIRDS AND THE DEAD
I wish I’d had to search longer for this opening sentence. But in retrospect it
was obvious. What better way to confound expectations?
The dead have their own way of doing things. Things the living don’t
understand. To the dead, the living are dead.
The same goes for birds and wires. Birds wonder why the fuck we’ve made so
many perches for them. Why we’ve saddled the sky with so little galloping.
Birds and the dead have this in common too: they float. The wisest of the dead
and the wisest of the birds both get high enough to see our whole damn world
is floating. Tokyo, New York, every damn metropolis soaring round the sun.
At the end of the day, the birds and the dead hang out. Chirp and flutter over
drinks as the night ascends, swooping over them with hands of starlight. And
the final line is clear.
CEDAR REY was born in Brazil. He currently resides in Jerusalem although he is often on the road. He plays jazz guitar as a session musician for a multitude of projects including salsa, flamenco, and the occasional thrust into pop. His poems have appeared in numerous publications and have been accepted for the upcoming issues of Kenyon Review and The Boston Review.
Read more by Cedar Rey:
Poem at Allpoetry.com
A piece on haiku at Wikinut
Poem at Bibliogrind