Awaiting a signal
for his return;
a Cardinal calls.
I walk to the window.
The corpse of my dead thoughts stirs...
All those mothers
awaiting long lost loved ones
every morning;
there were no Cardinals, Blue Jays or even Mourning Doves.
No calls.
All the waiting.
No end in sight.
Pippen didn't know where he was going (when he flew out).
Anymore did Ahmed (when he left the nest).
When they made him read his last rites on the blurred screen,
I felt
the cold white sheets of his bed where I'd once slept
envelope my chest
in a slow-forming noose
tugging out the last breath of hope in me...
I didn't have to wait;
his mother did.
And No, ...
There were no Cardinal calls;
only the DPMO,
finally claiming,
they had found some bones...
Note: Ahmed Altai was an Iraqi-American MIA (abducted by the Mehdi Army in Iraq) whose remains were finally found in 2012. His mother was my mother's childhood friend. When we (my mother, some friends & I) had all gone to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to attend a Marcel Khalife concert, he had offered me his bedroom to spend the night and went to spend the night at a friend's home.
Pippen was my cockatiel who in one month had memorized 12 bird songs (per the bird clock in 'his' room). I lost him in 2014.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-FMrk0VUjM
