Opal Moore

 

Spring Mix 

for Ahmaud
 

1.
A small bird built a secret nest
beneath my balcony. There must be
hatchlings, out of view.  
She flies back and forth, small prey
in her beak.
 

Some kind of wren, I think.
Small, brown and quick.  No time for 
singing midday.  Duty
is her instinct.
 

She flits. Frets. Undeterred.
She knows the world as it is.  No
conspiracy, no theory.  Life, for her,
is life.  Open throats and beak.  Trust,
her leaving marked by each return.
 

2. 
My neighborhood is gentrifying.
The whites are here, folks say.
We will get sidewalks now. And 4-way 
stop signs at the corner where that grandma
and her grandbabies were killed that time. 
They walk their dogs. Push baby carriages.
Post paranoia on Ring.
 

I have a Ring doorbell. We watch and
don’t subscribe.  A gimmick
my husband says, a veteran. Air Force.
(Not to be confused with Space Force.)
We watch dogs on leashes shit on our lawn.
We watch for property tax hikes.
I watch a Jaybird harass
a black and brown cat, her
message:  do not tarry here. 
 

3.
From my window I watch a carpenter bee
drill a new hole in my front post. NPR 
drones on in the background—they do
ads now like news. Across the street a boy plays alone
in his driveway.  The virus dictates his solitary game.
Another boy sits in the family car.  Doors flung open.
He wears earphones, private dances to House.
 

My nephew’s here today.  We 
entertain him on the deck.  He can’t come in,
took a plane from Orlando. Arrives
bearing flowers—spring mix 
in a cut glass vase, and a white orchid.
We remember not to hug.  
 

4.  
Mother wren is not alone.  She has a mate.
To my eye they are indistinguishable male, female.
They flit to and from the nest, tireless
they tend fledgling life. I wonder if they
think that this is hard.  I wonder if they mourn
the one among too many mouths 
to feed, the one outbid by its siblings, the one
who will fall from the nest, not fly. 
 

I think my springtime thoughts.  The wrens 
see the world as it is.  As it must be—a conspiracy
of need.  My husband jokes he will
charge them rent.  The gift orchid trembles 
white in a breeze unthreatening 
as the lithe brown boy jogging 
past this house, his daily run
unmolested.

​

​

​

after “Girl with Fan” & “Angel #3”

2 paintings by Charmaine Minniefield

​

This 
is how we dream
of girlhood
girl girl girl-ness
Sunday dress 
white 
as cotton fields
in a painting
and we are 
not picking it. 
 

We are brisk 
no sweat
petticoats bristling 
with white crinoline we float 
like dandelion fluff—but girls still, 
stuck to dark legs
yet rooted so
telltale knees are
scrappy vivid maps of
hard play, riotous days 
of girls who are not fluff
knees not yet ladylike,
girls unconvinced of the dream
of our taming
when we’ll be washed white 
in Jesus’ blood. 

     *

​

This is how we forget race,
smooth archival faces 
photo grey cool
as innocence lost to first loves
first cars, first babies fat
and laughing, picture books
framed in
bright yellow wreaths 
of memory

in warm yellow Sundays,
funeral fans cooling death 
advertising a good
black enterprise
because people will always
need burying.
 

And death: it will be god’s gift 
work-of-art dignified
watercolor blues 
and yellows splashed 
over a wax resist,
to preserve the whites.
 

And death, sweet 
like faith and god.
Chosen.
Earned.
No cell phone video.
 

     *
 

This is how we dream
of grace
our once hungry arms
bereft, finally
unfleshed
gone to feathers
re-appointed
for flight.