Ten Thousand Sparrows II The Night of Ten Thousand Sparrows

The last half of my teenage years.
I took a lovers every word like a sweet
seedcake from his mouth.
I took my parents every word like communion –
but it was really a quicksand
dragging me into its ragged hole. 
I didn’t know – and
I don’t know why.

In a room full of night
there was a stiff hospital bed and
a check from nurses every half hour.
I was asked to bear down and they would take
out these long, bloody jells.
On a half arm table
with powdery sterile gloves,
the nurses put the clots on plastic trays and
begin to tear apart something
that should have never seen light.
A procedure for them – a casual routine,
their motions meticulous, a silent movie. 
They said they had to check to be sure
that the fetus had not passed through.

These jell forms were not red,
they were beyond red somehow.
They were purple, a shade of purple –
thick as flesh and seemed to be the
color of all life itself. 

I no longer fought the pain,
the more I struggled, the deeper I seemed to get. 
Relaxing, flowing with it
with the prompt nurses procedure –
each examination on little trays in front of me
with powder laden latex gloves.

My body seemed to be half
immersed after the operation.
I hardly slept that night.
Someone pale and granular
stared back at me
from the bathroom mirror.
 
It started to get light outside –
from black to gray and the birds came
with the morning.
Those little sparrows that seem to be
everywhere.  The common ones
that no one ever notices or holds dear.

There were four or five of them on the
window ledge.  Then eight, twenty, forty –
a kaleidoscope of light and their tiny sounds.
There were ten thousand sparrows on that ledge.
Each one tiny and precious like my baby
that lay dead inside.

But they were savage
taking everything into their mouths –
twisting the blood, the baby, every gritty delusion,
gathering up like seeds, rolling them in their beaks
and pointed, thin tongues.
They fought and jumped from one place to another
stealing everything that they could.
And then they flew away.