sitting bird

It happens every spring
some infant bird, fat and feathered,
on the vine beside my door
abandoned by its mother
like the inconsolable child in the supermarket aisle
making its shrill insistent cry
come back come back come back come back

either way, you, or make that I, want to say
that’s enough, be quiet now
she’ll soon be back. This morning I watched
a video of children in Gaza, the boys in nappies
carried tiny plastic guns
in the street, the older boys held bigger ones
their aiming eyes looking straight

towards the camera. In a refuge painted green
girls with angel faces and sleekly plaited hair
tell.
They tell
it’s the way their mothers’
heads were blown
off in the fighting

 better they say, to be martyrs, in Paradise
all will be well,
we will be happy there.

more to come/

Words are meant to sustain us.
No longer.
              I tell this bird to cease its clamour     
just be quiet, its unbearable
your mother is coming, she is only
gone this little while, she will feed
you soon, that racket is crowding
out my day, so many voices
come back come back it’s what mothers do

what do we do when there are no longer words
to summon our mothers

Fiona Kidman (November, 2023)

Fiona Kidman DCNZM is a sometime poet, with six books of poems over the past fifty or so years. The last one was This change in the light (Penguin Random House 2015). Her several novels include This Mortal Boy  which won the Jann Medlicott Ockham Book Award for Fiction in 2019.