David Crews

Bird Calls, Last Spring

I remember a barn here, she says

in summer at certain light, the day filled

with a golden field cradled in mountains, the sky

a graying torment the way the sky can be

through an open doorway.

And the orange flash of swallows circling low

in the tall grasses, their upturn and dive a deluge

fluid wingbeat, the pull  release.  They too were here.

I wanted them to perch in sun

just to get a good look at one,  little flickers

of fire, iridescent in the afternoon.  They come such a long way

they know.  There was a barn here,  it was a red barn

the swallows

with their chittering keet keet.  We stayed for an hour

and that hour turned into a new sky, the swallows

in out from the eaves, rotting and rain-soaked, crumbling

to the rock and mud below.  That barn

had a foundation maybe a few cinderblocks thick

on either side.  If only I could build a house.

(She lets go of his hand, stares into a distance)  

Our love matters

don’t think for a moment that is not all of it.   

You remember my touch, my hand on your face, the soft

warmth of my mouth in your mouth.  It hurts

just to say that

because we both know how things fall down

and away.   What then, if we do not say it.

This poem and painting were first exhibited together in April 2017 at NorthWind Fine Arts in Saranac Lake, NY for the gallery’s annual National Poetry Month Celebration. “Bird Calls, Last Spring” was also published in Journal of New Jersey Poets (2018)