Starling’s Egg The first thing I know is I cannot hold tight the fragile and hidden body inside the cerulean shelled egg, snatched by the wind from its home in the mothering tree and shattered against the full round earth, stopping the half-formed heart, the baby’s uncalled, bald cry. The first and final flight. I cannot cradle the broken wing of the unsung thing, cannot whisper its name or stroke the back of the newborn being. I can only peer down heavy weighted at the ants filling and feasting on an ounce of flesh and heart wing. Had the thing a name I would’ve prayed for it to make it to the sun; the luring light of fallen winged beauty. But nameless I can only bury the starling at its mother’s grieving feet.
Short Infinites My sweet Babe’s laughter buoyant bounces off the air, carrying with it an entire universe in a brief moment. Tucked into that sweet chortle is the joy of cotton candy skies over mist kissed mornings, the hushing of the waves that smooth the sand’s worries. It is the warmth of coming home, out of the cold on a tired, darkened day. It sings of the ease of summer heat relenting into cool aired evenings. I am captured by its unexpected sound when discovering the humor of being. So untouched by worry, for a moment I am afloat in this space of tenderness and bursting starlight that goes on and on, breaking up the length of these relentless days into short, beautiful infinites.
Hummingbird Air perched angels bless flowers with honeyed mouths---- quick like lovers and ghosts. A brief image of iridescent feathers; I think we are not meant to capture this brief visit from an ancient God of song and war. Born from the eye of summer she appears, a bright child of the sun. Her gift is catching lightness where there seems none God, to be a hummingbird in flight with their rapid wing beats on the breast plate, singing I am alive, alive, alive, so goes the song of down and upstrokes, that thundering, delicate hum and the harmonic motion of a great and bursting life abled to weather the dark winds on a diet of sugar and song then swiftly fall into the safety of a torpor and survive the long night of uncertainty. And yet, still wake in the morning, rise up out of the ashen night, kiss again the flowers brief, bright breasted and floating on air, hopeful, and beating.
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Allyson Abernathy holds a BA in Creative Writing from Anderson University. She’s had fiction, non-fiction, and poetry previously published in the Ivy Leagues Literary Journal and the collection Love: An Anthology of Love Poems. She is currently resides in South Carolina.
