Bluebird Abecedarian
Pamela Uschuk
for Laura-Gray Street
Aegean blue etches frost air a deeper indigo than river-scrubbed lapis or
blue hair dye or
cadmium fresh from the tube onto canvas’s
deep glacial lake. Blue catches me wandering dawn song
ether, where no bombs blow off
freezing feathers from wings, where no random
gunshots thwack red birds with the snap of their terrible teeth.
Hobbling, mothers drag kids through Gaza, from unsafe to unsafe
in genocide’s firestorms of missile revenge.
Just when I think this Virginia sky has birthed a
kite of quietude with its upswung
limbs of live oak, redbud, elm and
maple’s sugar hope
news intrudes its list of atrocities
opening old wounds that never get a chance to heal.
Peace? Ceasefire? These ancient
questions are tacked to my sleeve like small
roses of blood leaking from a child’s forehead pixilated on
screen, laptop or smart
TV in your own living room where you
used to lounge with your lover or your cat, both
valentines of hope, that elusive
word again like a ghost whale or
x-ray of a leg bone shattered by a grenade or an explosion of
yellow feathers. Ground
Zero is war’s footprint, unseen by bluebirds the size of a human heart.
I wrote this Abecedarian as a model poem for an advanced undergraduate poetry class when I was the Pearl S. Buck Visiting Writer at Randolf College in Virginia. Besides Natalie Diaz’s wonderful “Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation,” I couldn’t find an example that was quite right for this class. This poem tries to hold all the grief and outrage I feel by the ongoing assault on Gaza, a country that is has been almost bombed out of existence by Israel whose firepower is overwhelming. I incorporated a lot of bird imagery because birding is one of my greatest joys. I dedicated the poem to Laura-Gray Street who brought me to Randolf and who I had the great privilege of going birding with. The poem turned out to be an anti-war poem. The last line was one of those gifts that come out of the blue, a lucky line. This is another breakthrough poem for me.
PAMELA USCHUK is the author of eight books of poems and has received many awards including the American Book Award. She is a senior fellow and board member of Black Earth Institute, as well as Editor in Chief of Cutthroat, a Journal of the Arts. www.pamelauschuk.com