Again
Sophie Wood
Image by Dave Herring
The birds cloud the skies again
and we cannot sleep through the rising fire of dawn,
each morning pummeled with song.
The bell-makers
have their jobs back,
just for the joy of it
and the clatter
as woodpeckers make
their creviced inquiry
What’s living in these dead places?
The world voluminous
we walk quietly now.
Yes,
the shoreline still regurgitates plastic bags
pop-tops, disposable razors,
and the cathedral bodies of grief-stricken whales
but not as often as before.
Besides, we have remembered what to do with the bones.
At supper we climb the trails back up the cliffs
leave the roar down below,
still smelling of salt and sea plants.
Schools of us
greet the evening star,
walk through the doors of our wailing houses,
each archway a clavicle crooning
its long gone underwater song again.
Sophie Wood
Sophie Wood is a performance artist, freelance farmer, and lover of sequins. She performs, tends plants, and gathers people together under many guises, including The Royal Frog Ballet, the Church of Flowers, and the Governor’s Institute of The Arts. She currently lives and collects poems in rural Vermont and North Carolina, on unceded land of the Abenaki people and the Lumbee tribe among others. You can find occasional updates on her artistic work at @isstillfloating and purchase copies of her chapbooks After and The Distance on Etsy.