Starting off 2023 with my mom in the hospital, recovering from surgery to replace her artificial knee and the part of her leg above it that broke as she was going out to dinner two days after Christmas. Here's a poem that popped into my head yesterday. As I was leaving the house to go to the hospital a cardinal flashed by, and I remembered the folklore taught to me by a friend. This is a first draft.
Cardinal
They say when you see a cardinal
it is actually the spirit of a dead relative
come to tell you that they are in Heaven
and are happy
I must be very blessed
for I see cardinals all the time
buff-brown females with orange beaks
males just a shade darker than crimson
singing their song: "Pray for PEACE, pray for PEACE"
I don't know birdsongs
not like my birder friends do
I know one, from when I was a child, a long, complex song
I could sing it today
birds live many years, something I just learned recently
I have not heard this particular song in a very long time
so maybe each time I heard it it was the same bird
year after year, singing it for me
until it died of old age
or in the talons of a hawk
or the mouth of a cat
and now its song lives only in my memory
I could sing it today
Were the birds named for the clerics in their red vestments, I wonder
or were the clerics named for the birds?
I could find the answer in seconds, I suppose
but for now, I choose not to