Resourceful, cheap, a little smug—I used to prowl yard sales for the unusual bird cage. I sought dormers and turrets, pagodas, onion dome castles . . . structures I adopted, then adapted, spray painting them in wavy gradations of color. I tucked them like sculptures among our perennials.
Soon, tendrils nosed through the grids,
swarmed the trays,
entwined hinges and doors.
Yesterday . . .
flitters, cheeps, manic thumps—
a trapped bird,
hurling itself from side to side.
I fumbled in vain with the door.
He rocketed toward the roof. And clung there.
If bird toes have knuckles, his turned white.
Gentle shaking failed to dislodge him.
Wings flailing, he wedged his head
through the bars of the ceiling—
clear to his downy throat.
Couldn’t go back. Couldn’t break free.
I eased the bird cage onto its side,
broke off the plastic tray.
Shards fell around us.
Half-strangled, his body went still.
Gasping, I righted the cage.
Gravity partnered with dead weight,
and this time, the captive slipped free.
Off he zoomed, leaving me in the wreckage:
- Busted plastic
- Marvel, at God’s timing
- Guilt
I had been party to harm. Which could have killed him.
This realization aligns with questions I’m asking myself about dead-weight thinking, the kind that seeps in, over time, unknowingly absorbed.
For instance, racist assumptions so ingrained they’ve dulled my awareness. I want equality for everyone. But like the cage, I am part of a structure that imperils others.
And like the bird, I’m scrabbling for footing. Can’t go back; gotta break free. No more looking the other way.
I’m no one’s savior. I look to God the Savior for how to proceed. I want my blind spots exposed, so I can lament and confess them, receive God’s forgiveness.
Transformation begins in my own backyard.
These tools are helping me:
- Coursera, online class (free): “Race and Cultural Diversity in American Life and History”
- Praying / listening /asking questions / thinking on paper / praying
- poem-a-day (free), featuring black poets through August (Read today’s here. Be sure to click the “about” caret)
And these poets:
Loretta Diane Walker: In This House, Phyllis Wheatly Book Award. Sample poem
Ross Gay: Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude, 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Sample Poem
Natasha Tretheway: Native Guard, 2007 Pulitzer Prize. Sample poem
Toi Derricotte: “i”: New and Selected Poems. Sample Poem
What resources are you discovering? Please tell me about writers who are speaking to you . . .
“But like the cage, I am part of a structure that imperils others.” Spot on, Laurie. Innocent intention, looming disaster…until you valued the vulnerable life held captive, more than the object of captivity. I will keep this metaphor with me as I continue to deconstruct the dangerous constructs in my own mind and heart.
I have purchased “Resurrecting the Bones” by Jacinta White. She writes poetry to process her “journey through African American Churches and Cemeteries in the Rural South.” Jacinta is also the founder of Snapdragon: A Journal of Healing )I had a poem published there last year). I think you would really enjoy this one, Laurie!
Michelle, I am grateful for your beautifully honest words. I want to develop more stamina “to deconstruct the dangerous constructs in my own mind and heart.” I love the way you phrased that. I just finished listening to White Awake, by Daniel Hill. Really helpful to me.
I love it when the world fleetingly shows itself smaller, gathering folks. Jacinta just sent me a link to a poem she published by a friend of mine, Loretta Diane Walker. Perhaps you two were in the same issue. Loretta encouraged me to send Snapdragon some work and I plan on submitting October 1st. I will order Jacinta’s book. Thank you so much for mentioning it.
Blessings on your chapbook, friend. May it land gently and deeply with many. I’m excited for you!
Thank you fo the blessings, Laurie! I’m excited for it as well. And how wonderfully gathered we are becoming. I was published at Snapdragon last fall, and will be submitting this open period as well. Will hopefully “meet”you there.
Also, check out the upcoming workshop “On Place.” I participated in the “Elegies” workshop this summer and it was so well-prepared and generative.
“Wonderfully gathered” . . . YES, just so. I would love to have work appear alongside yours. Here’s hoping!
Also: I will check out the upcoming workshop. Good to hear of your experience with “Elegies.”
I studied online via Zoom with Ellen Bass this past summer and am signed up for her “Revision” class, beginning in October. Nothing like the right mentor at the right time.
“When the student is ready . . . ” etc. How timely, these connections that occur so organic-ly. So divinely.
Off to explore “On Place” . . .
Oh, Laurie…. I am always so inspired by your “listening lessons.” It seems that whenever you’re open to hear from God, He speaks through the very simple things. Your analogy is very apt for the times indeed. I’m also asking and praying about how to proceed/what to do. But the doing begins with the knowing. Thank you so much for these resources, especially the poem a day.
I’ve purchased Latasha Morrison’s book “Be the Bridge” and our women min. leader (who is my niece) may be doing a read along book club. It will be good to have some like minded listeners to process my thoughts.
Jody, I’m SO grateful for the eloquent, simple things of life that God uses to teach me. I do so much better with them (much as I always wanted, during college days, to one day become an intellectual). Thinking of that old aspiration today makes me shake my head and chuckle.
I think you’ll be able to access the other poems sent out earlier on poem-a-day. The variety of voices and styles and content has been wonderfully expanding my thinking and understanding.
After you’ve spent some time with the group and the Morrison book, would you let me know your thoughts about it via email? I’m adding the title to my list. Thank you so much for telling me about it.
I’m going to email you a link to a reading tonight, at 5:00 pm: Ellen Bass and Toi Derricotte (founder of Cave Canem). I’m partway through Toi’s New and Selected Works and look forward to watching and listening to her (as well as Ellen; I’m currently taking her marvelous online class).
I stood slack jawed, in amazement, as a young black girl, trapped against a temporary fence, was beaten by local police officers at WSU Oshkosh. Walking to class through a gamut of out of town Sheriff’s Deputies and National Guard troops, and being chilled when I reailzed they were standing in the gutter but eye to eye with me on the sidewalk, or so it seemed, (I later determined in talking to one of them it was the BOOTS that made them seem so tall – and I’m not a short person. Your attention to detail, doing what needs to be done WHEN it needs to be done, and your ability to communicate the experience to us lesser beings always inspires.
John, the searing scene you describe, all these years later, is shocking. The outnumbered girl. The beating. The BOOTS.
Thank you for sharing the memory. I have not witnessed anything like your story, in person, but I have too turned away from the news, feeling helpless to change anything one whit.
May we increasingly see what needs saying and doing, and how and when, each in our own way.
Profound, thank you!
Check out :
21 – Day Racial Equality Callenge
I’ll share it with you on FB
Angela, thank you so much for sharing this resource with me and the readers here. Grateful!
Beautifully written, I hope most of us are being as introspective 💕
Thank you, Patti. I hope so too.
And I hope we keep helping each other find the way forward.
I love the way you always capture the essence of a moment, if you wrote a book with all these moments and thoughts it would be a best seller.
I so look forward to your heart felt tales . I can feel exactly The anguish that you felt ,the panic ,the fear . Then the relief..
The correlation bridge to life together and a society void of race was eloquently stated …
We can all gain and prosper from that look inside , self examination.
Laurie I love the way you see life ..
Larry, your words, as always, mean so much to me, thank you.
And I love the generous way YOU show me life through your lens, ever eloquent.
Laurie, maybe God in His sovereignty let that bird fly into the cage, so you would struggle to free him, and to know people are never quite free from prejudice–and if we think we are, then we are still caged in it. Oh my. Powerful post. I’m flailing too, listening, trying to learn, humbling myself. Maybe we listen best flat on our faces, but with our ears open.
You asked for resources: Please see my dear friend Lynne Jackson’s website called Dred Scott Lives. Lynne (then Madison) was a childhood friend. We attended school together in the third grade and were inseparable. My parents moved, and I never saw her again, but always longed to. God reconnected us fifty-four years later on FB! We still both live in Saint Louis. In perusing her website, what I had never known as a child is that she is the great-great granddaughter of Dred Scott. Her life mission is to carry on his incredible legacy in a peaceful, educational way. Literally, while all hell was breaking loose in Charlottesville by White supremacists, Lynne and her team were conducting an important symposium at the Saint Louis History Museum. Gathered on the stage were she, and the descendants of various “players” in the Dred Scott Decision and the great great grandson of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. This dialogue was one of confession, forgiveness, reconciliation, and comprehending perspectives of men who lived during those days preceding the Civil War, to help us better understand. I greatly admire Lynne’s work and tireless efforts in this cause.
https://dredscottlives.org/
Lynn, I love that image: listening, prone, ears open. Hearts and minds too. Thank you so much for this link. The symposium you describe sounds profound. How marvelous for you and your friend to have reconnected after your cherished shared childhoods.
Off to visit her website!
Laurie dear, thanks for speaking so openly to and for all of us, for few there are who have never been guilty of this. I’ve been working on it longer, is all. (Old age adds particular perspective, I guess.) Anyway, our pastor is using a deeply relevant book to Zoom with us weekly. It’s a great addition: “I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness,” by Austin Channing Brown. Buy, borrow, or check it out at your library.
You are a purveyor of wisdom lightly disguised by many ways & means. I thank God for your gifting and open honesty. Onward!
Judith, when I think of all I have yet to learn about his, I am grateful that wisdom is coming through. What an encouragement that is! You have modeled for me deeply honest searching and engagement with a variety of issues. Thank you so much for that, and for this book recommendation. I ordered it from the library today and look forward to reading it.
Love this, Mum ♥️
Thanks for reading and chiming in, dear heart. If I ever starting acting stuck, like I’m too old to learn, please shake me good. And point me toward the next book . . .
Is Rachel your real daughter?
Yes, 100 % R.E.A.L.
I asked, b/c of the “mum” 🙂 I always wanted Sheridan to call me mummy! 🙂
She didn’t, but as a child called me mumma. Close enough. Love to see you chitting and chatting online w/ your Real Rachel!
Lynn, somewhere along the line she dubbed me Mumsy, then shortened it to Mums and sometimes Mum. Love them all. Love HER.
Kudos to Sheridan. Mumma is delightful.
From your backyard birdcage account to the mirror hanging on my wall. It’s time to take a good look anew and trust God to be faithful to show me the ways I have been part of racial carnage.
I, too, Can’t go back and am desiring to learn the steps forward. Thank you for your poet’s eye, tender heart and keen intellect. Thank you for your included resources. I will read them today and share them with my 99-year-old father.Grateful that it’s never too late to learn.
Dear Judy, lifelong student of truth, your words of resolve and hope bolster my hopes. Thank you. I’m so glad you’ll explore the resources and share them with your fabulous dad. Wonderful to hear from your today! xo
We’re doing Ross Gay’s Book of Delights for the July book club at Tweetspeak. It’s been… delightful.
I’ve been meaning to order his new book. I’ll bet the T.S. conversations are rich. Does Ross Gay know about your reading group? Might he zoom with you?
I’ve read Catalog three times over the past couple weeks, trying to absorb the beauty and truth, heartache and magic.
So thought-provoking, as always . . .
Dana, thank you. Glad to be thinking alongside you. I am finding it deeply strengthening to be in touch (albeit virtually) with other thinkers and learners and those willing to teach me.