Three more NaPoWriMo poems

Yes, I've been writing. Yes, more frightened, angry, heartbroken poems about grief. (Just what you wanted to read, eh?) I'm going to post the three from the last three days in one post, so that you can read them in the order I wrote them, and so follow the flow of images. Have fun.

(Monday's poem)

Haibun: Sticks and Stones

There are feathers in the grass today, Wendy, white ones with freckles, from something big and built for cold. Snow geese, possibly. Their thick shafts are thrust into the thawing ground, or woven through the thatch of last year's grass. The grass that was alive when you were alive. I can't stop thinking things like this.

The feathers are hand-long, and the bottom few vanes and barbs a downy frizz, but they are not down, they are flight feathers. They are strong, made to carry weight. There are a lot of them here, under the big silver maple which is just letting like feelers out of its buds, like the living creature coming out of a barnacle shell. There might be a dozen or so. How many flight feathers could even a big goose loose, do you think?

I'm thinking about the barnacles now, and wondering if the fishermen found you in a net or on a hook. And then I try to think about feathers again, how you were going to paint some for me, me with my new job and the money to commission you. The Ball jar with feathers in it sitting by a gnarled bit of root and three water-round stones. I am walking and I've slowed to see the feathers but don't stop walking. My ride is here and now I'm hurrying, almost crying, the sky the bluish clear of the Ball jar and its curved raised letters pounding on the inside of my wrist.

     in the car,
     we talk about curry