Half-Haiku: The Firebird Again

Without belief the phoenix
is just a bird on fire.




photograph by Zoolien

The Firebird Does Not Learn

She is an egg and every shadowed glance,
every silent forest destroys her.
She is newborn and the shark-tooth grit
of the earth clings to her wet eyes.
She is in flames, the jeweled fire
that everyone remembers,
and then, what she had not foreseen,
She is burned and not consumed.
Burned. She feels her feathers
knit together. Burned. It hurts her
to heal. She is still.
She dreams of the next dawn,
a darkness, a nest of ash.




The Firebird, illustration by Edmund Dulac

Three Days In

Nothing is longer
than these twenty-eight days, not
waiting rooms, not pregnancy tests,
not the moment when the brakes
will not save you. In four weeks
I will die, find my own grave,
pull the earth blanket over
my grateful eyes. In four weeks
I will be born, white-hot
from the belly of a meteor,
shooting feathers and sparks,
burning every bridge I come to.




photograph by flickr user Johnson Cameraface

Shiva's Granddaughter in Late-Night Meditation

"Barn's burnt down--
now I can see the moon."
-Mizuta Masahide

With every sunset her appetite grew.
She prayed for the pipes to burst,
for a fire in an electrical storm,
an unlikely New England earthquake. She dreamt
of her bookshelves embedded
in beating hearts of flame,
the good white china crunching in fragments
beneath the smoldering rubble.
And, miles away in the dark,
a secret hand to wipe the soot
from her tear-damp cheeks.




photograph by Mark Allanson