today

one time he wanted to be a bird
by mekeel mcbride


this happened near the end of a long winter.
his bird-wanting got stronger and stronger
like a pond getting big water from somewhere else.
the way you come back from sleep
with real kisses still warm on your forehead
from someone you love thousands of miles away.


one day he wakes with red wings, no words
and an infinite love of wind. his wife is not
surprised. she opens the window. she sends after him
a hyacinth-scented kiss. over snow-capped 
backyard barbecues and stalled autos, cold dogs
and sealed-shut cemeteries he flies.


old woman guarding her husband who wanders
through coma alone; telephone repairman
with handfuls of broken wires in his cold hand,
these are only a few of the ones who see him flying-
wild, wind-tossed rose in dead weather.
and feel a small part of the lost heart return.


enough, just enough. does he know this happens?
he knows open sky. he knows being weightless
in the wind. later, it's not that he stops wanting
to be a bird. he could have lived forever in that red body.
but he misses his wife, woman with a soul full of
portuguese sunlight, window-opener, kisses


like red hibiscus. so he goes back to being a man.
and that, he thinks, is just as good as flying, 
though not the same. but look carefully and
sometimes you will see how he carries inside himself
the mad happiness of trees shaken by spring storms,
the pollen-maps of rapturous bees.