WHEN BIRDS COME TO CALL

A broken bird feeder found its way to me last year.

I painted it in shades of country cream.

I filled a cup of water, and sprinkled a meal, 

fit, I thought, for any feathered queen.

No bird came. Months passed by,

and today, hurrah, a visit made.

Bib of blue, and frankly suspicious, she flitted 

and flirted, from lilac to magnolia, 

to her new wooden house,

unconscious of my joyful gaze.

Chaffinch and sparrow followed, drinking in the rain,

picking through the catkin carpet,

the willow leaves, 

the tall, unwieldy, unmowed grass. 

Meanwhile, the news. Meanwhile, the roll call of names 

we never knew, strangers perching gently on our hearts. 

You ask me if I believe in God.

I say, What is God? What is a poem? 

I say, I lost my friends one by one to time, 

but when the birds came to call,

I found I had lost not one of my friends, 

not one of them at all. 

© Shaista Tayabali, 2020

Today, May 14th, was the birthday of both my Uncle Motu and my Aunty Saida. They weren’t twins. Aunty was five years older. They loved us kids equally. Growing up, we were showered with love when they visited our Bombay home, which had been their childhood home, and then when we moved to our shared new homeland of England, love continued, unperturbed by changed geographical boundaries. They are both gone now, into the other world ... but the memory of love remains.

(participating in Open Link Night for Dverse Poets)