 You are standing alone in the doorway
as they back out of the driveway, everyone waving except the driver who needs to think about where they’re going. Now the house feels like you hosted a wake. They promised to teach you to Skype, but it’s hard to embrace their wavering faces, which seem as unreliable as the Hereafter. You did not share the pain their absence makes or your dubious faith in the law of object permanence--your fear that when you can’t see them they don’t exist.  Before you play the wounded bird
think of the charadrius vociferus commonly known as the killdeer. Because she builds her nest in shortgrass fields and sometimes parking lots, nature compensates with a behavior called injury feigning. She attempts to protect her fledglings by making a strident and piping sound as she hops on the ground, and flaps a fake broken wing hoping to fool the cunning coyote with a plaintive over here, over here. As I walk down a country road and harken to her cry, I reply, “I am not your enemy.” Driven by fear and destined by nature ever to be the wounded bird, she’s incapable of grasping that distinction. And you? |
click to website
AuthorNancy Harris McLelland taught creative writing, composition, and literature for over twenty years and Conducted writing workshops for the Western Folklife Center, Great Basin College , and the Great Basin Writing Project . An Elko County native with a background in ranching. McLelland has presented her "Poems from Tuscarora" Both at daytime and evening events at the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko. Her essay, "Border Lands: Cowboy Poetry and the Literary Canon" is in the anthology Cowboy Poetry Matters . Categories |
RSS Feed