Birds of Perugia, by Elina Petrova

The Sermon to the Birds, by Giotto (Italy) 1297 (a detail of St Francis Receiving the Stigmata)

Birds of Perugia
 
Recovering after a year in a prisoner-of-war camp,
he slowly regained strength, but visions persisted. 
 
He abandoned the silk business of his father, switched
from feasts to fasts. Merchants saw him talking to birds
 
and that was it – the gold he inherited was dust 
from country roads and sunshowers in random fields. 
 
Something odd and radiant happened at the woodland edge
outside Bevagna, where multitudes of “sisters-birds” 
 
stretched their necks and extended wings, as they listened to him 
praising the Giver of carefree flight. Not until his last word
 
did birds start rising, as if endowed with the reason. 
Of course, it’s fiction, but what would you know 
 
with a brain that lets you see this golden-leaf-on-wood
of October in a spectrum even narrower than a bird’s?

Elina Petrova

Until 2007 Elina Petrova lived in Ukraine and worked in engineering management. Now she assists in a Houston law firm and enjoys writing in her rose garden. Elina published two poetry books in English (Aching Miracle, 2015, and Desert Candles, 2019) after the first one in her native Russian language. Her poems have appeared in Notre Dame Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Texas and California Reviews, North Dakota Quarterly, and elsewhere. A film presenting her poem at the 2023 Miami Chroma Film Festival won in the category Best Cinematic Poetry.