​Thinking of Being a Bird, by Edith Friedman

Thinking of Being a Bird, by Irene Avaalaaqiaq Tiktaalaaq (Canada) 1981

​Thinking of Being a Bird
 
Another diagnosis oozes into town
trailing protocol 
 
Judy is thinking of
being a bird
 
her bright eye, her unvoiced laugh
At the farmer’s market with her whiteboard
 
“You lost your voice?” 
Mountain lion she writes, they gasp, she grins.
 
Round three, it’s difficult to eat now
she asks what we would do
 
her foot is still a human foot
her body carved like soapstone
 
patched and grafted
skin and words
 
the minutes burn inside her
each one dear as kin
 
suppose each thing contains its opposite
maybe an auk      diving
 
Edith Friedman

Edith Friedman‘s work has appeared in Sisyphus Literary Magazine and Zingara Poetry Review. She shelters in place with her husband and two sons, and studies writing at Saint Mary's College of California.