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Birds Like Bombs

I’ve been used to birds keeping their distance,
unprepared for the birds like bombs, exploding
upwards in sheer nerve as we walk the woods
early or late in the day.

Abrupt and rowdy, a sudden shredding of wings
like cloth ripped, igniting, these startled birds
shed their invisibility like first time spies
with unseasoned nerves.

It’s ludicrous though, because we still couldn’t
see them through the tangled fretwork of branches,
we only sensed their panic and exit, and knew we were
guilty of disturbance.

Why do the woods seethe with anxiety after years
of apparent calm? The birds once stayed aloof,
only objected to us from afar, while they wheeled
against a shifting sky.

And lately, they’ve brought their worry straight to us.
Walking down the hill with my son I shrieked when
a wood pigeon erupted in the grass. Neither of us
had seen it nestled there.

I shaped my hand to the bowl of snow-flecked ground
and felt the warmth the bird had left behind. Its traces
radiant, like the worry my son and I pass between us,
a living, dangerous thing.

Dagne Forrest’s poetry has appeared in journals in Canada, the US, Australia, and the UK. In 2021 she was one of 15 poets featured in The League of Canadian Poets’ annual Poem in Your Pocket campaign, had a poem shortlisted for the UK’s Bridport Prize, and won first prize in the Hammond House Publishing International Literary Prize (Poetry). Her creative nonfiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Lake Effect, Paper Dragon, and Sky Island Journal.

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