Cry of the Stars

canada goose leaps from the garden pond
into a spring storm, calling like my nana

with an arrowhead stuck at the back of her mouth;

she feels it catch every time she speaks.
she buckles her neck around the pain.

how long can one man elude winter?

go on while I rest, he said, and
she flew south without him.

now she remembers she lost something.

Theodore! she calls through vernal rain,
point of an arrowhead crying across the sky,

looking, looking, looking.

Mockingbird puts her wings akimbo and talks
my ear off at the bedroom window. She rambles

the way I imagine my grandmother calling
about her day, how the autumn breeze fluffed
her feathers and reminded her of husband and children,

how much she misses them, how she wishes
they could come home soon.

Languages skip in and out of her mouth
the way rainwater skips between leaves.
I recognize only one.

She waits, perched on the windowsill, disappointed
until I tell her—I only understand
when you say hello. Then

she gets it. She holds my face. She says:
hello hello hello hello.