Last Month

A few days into October
and I'm still staring at you,
September.
All your days on this floor --
a pile of spent matchsticks.

You were for the birds, clearly.

On the 3rd, the cardinal
that had been attacking his
own reflection in my car's
side view mirror, shitting mad,
finally gave up.
Won or lost or just tired, he went
brightly, bloody, somewhere else.

And the crows out my
open bedroom window,
the one above my bed,
on the 7th and the 12th
and then on the 21st,
waking me from thin sleep
with their outcries.
On the 15th I learned that a
group of crows is called a murder.
A murder of crows crying me awake.

The afternoon of the 24th
a woman told me a story
about hearing a hummingbird's song --
that tiny pearl in the world
of cackles and croonings,
something a mockingbird could
never aspire to, a voice so
soft and small from
the slighest of tongues.

And at the close, on your very
last day I watched the
woodpecker in the backyard
bang away, knocking out code
on the thick pine trunk.
I wrote down what he said,
over and over and over, that
relentless, hard-nosed harbinger:

Here comes the turn.
Here comes the turn.
Here comes the turn.