Small Mercies

I

When I go into my garden

I find

Two birds, trapped in my

Berry cage,

Terrified and beautiful

Streaks of red/brown,

Their wings flap wildly,

Feathers frayed around the edges

And I

Can identify.

I wonder what I would have found

If I'd stayed in that day:

Two broken birds,

sad and cold on the ground.

I open the cage door,

And one and then two

Fly away

Free.

I sew the hole

(ripped by late Spring snow)

So nothing else can get

Trapped

Inside.

It is

(Broken, but)

Whole.

II

When I check on my kitty

(my Child, my Daughter)

I turn her over, and see

The hole in her sutures,

Oozing pink/white

My ex says the doctors

Said only to keep it clean.

No,

I say,

We have to take her in.

She fights only a little

When we place her in the cage.

I think she knows

We’re trying to help.

She squirms out of her cone,

(Clever girl)

She stares out the window

At everything she never sees.

The doctors

Sew the hole.

She is

(Broken, but)

Whole.

III

When my partner was 3

His heart was incomplete.

They cut him open,

Installed

Tubes in his chest.

They had to tie him down

When he woke up,

He remembered the knife

(Little body too small to fully sedate)

He tried to run

Away

From the open chest

He remembered

In his child’s mind.

They did it again

At 15

Cut him open,

Replaced the tubes,

Sewed up the hole,

Made him

and his heart

(Broken, but)

Whole

IV

When I turn my Inner Eye

Into myself

I don’t see

XX or XY

I see

A, Z

And everything in between.

When I put down the bottle

Things become more clear.

I find the hole,

I sew it up

(With twelve steps and fellowship)

I open the cage door

And fly away

Free.

I am

(Broken, but)

Whole.