written at my home on Eden Lane, Larkspur, California Birds gather in my garden in Eden as if they were clouds leaking music. Birds gather in my garden feasting on shadows as crows patrol the sapphirine sky. No telling it is autumn in California except for the seasonal threat of conflagration. O birds, don’t desert me! We have been lovers for sixty-some years! Kind Christs pacing under my flowers, without your examples I’d never have learned how to fly. Still, I miss the vultures, those not here in Larkspur where they are few and far between. I miss their quiet, black deliberation, their relaxed allegiance to death. Birds gather in my garden hopping from tree branch to cement oblivious to the letters that would trap them in a cage of story and judgment. Birds gather in my garden on this planet of hunger. God is all desire. Here comes the fire. The birds don’t need to repent.
Laurie Lessen Reiche ’s work has been featured or is forthcoming in Phoebe: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Feminist Scholarship, After Happy Hour Review, Apricity Magazine, The Plains Poetry Review, Pegasus Literary Magazine, MORIA Literary Magazine, Princeton Arts Review, Sanskrit Literary-Arts Magazine, Sundog Lit, Slant, Swamp Ape Review, Poetry: San Francisco, Grasslands Review, Plainsongs, and Southern Poetry Review, among others.
