I.
Busy bird, greeting the dawn, why do you try so hard? Don’t you know you’re plain? No one thinks you’re pretty, your streaked brown house dress drab as an unmade-up house wife. You are defined by all the things you’re not. Your friends in the flock cock their eyes to the side, cluck about how nice you are, bless your heart. Their home-bound hopes put no faith in infrared, no love to explore. When you dream, do you soar?
II.
Covert as a crone, your invisibility your superpower.
III.
Why do you sing? You chant your tune to me, proof of my complicity as if nothing is wrong, as if our terrible wreckage of this desert dawn hasn’t burned all hope from your pedigree. The sun fires the plainsong in your throat. In our hot house, sinners exposed, brought to our knees, we hum your tune while the Earth lurches around the edges of its pain. We sing laments. Dirges. Swan songs. We are listening.
IV.
Are you satisfied with your fate? Or are you jealous of the shiny martin, dressed in purple, or your cousin with the important white man’s name? Taxonomy of patriarchy no place for you, obedient hen.
V.
So hard to take you seriously. So easy to ignore the dull edge of your threats, complained in vain. Yours might be the last species left—survival of the nondescript. If you die before dawn, who will pray for you?
VI.
If god changes his mind, if we will all come out of this unscathed, what will you have learned?
—
Renata Golden is the author of Mountain Time: A Field Guide to Astonishment, published by CSU Press/UGA Press in 2024. The book was a finalist for the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award and the River Teeth Nonfiction Award. Her prose and poetry have been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies. Renata earned an M.F.A. from the University of Houston. Originally from the South Side of Chicago, Renata lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
