I was standing on the platform; thinking

of she who was, and is not; my heart sinking

as the sea ebbed and flowed.

It seemed like time had slowed.

My visage was the color of death,

as dark as the grief I felt.

Then I heard, above and around me, flutterings

of white birds with black wingtips.

I looked ahead and saw where the sky kissed the sea – the horizon –

maybe that was the birds’ destination.

There was a bird that flew further away from the pack;

All its wings had turned black.


‘Are the birds getting darker because they passed by me?’ I thought,

“Maybe they are taking away all the gloom I brought.”

I muttered, ‘Fly, birds; fly;

Take my pain into oblivion; fly.’

That day, the birds must have been listening raptly

because they flapped their wings violently.

No one, not even birds, wants emotional baggage,

especially when one has one’s own luggage.

When I saw how the birds were eager to escape from me,

I wondered whether my sorrow was, to those birds, ill.

So, I uttered, ‘Fly, birds; fly;

from pain and oblivion, fly.’