Alva and the Blackbird, 1944

We waited for the war. I watched his shadow tick acrossthe floor whenever he shifted his weight, lightcontracting through the hallways of the house:

Alva, I done waited for ye now, half an ire.My brother winked from the hallwayas I laced my shoes to irk him

just as slow as I could. That morning,I’d carried my father’s bucket of waxesand saddle soaps to the back porch where I worked

a rag deep into the crevicesof my boots trying to decipher their voicesbeneath the window.

In the bends of my knees, I worked the swing.Summer static of birdsong was deep in the air.A bird warbled in the leaves and called out

in every direction, pumping the tiny lungof its throat: a trilling I couldn’t name.It was my father who knew their names.

Through the brick wall, I heard the door shut,hushed voices: Chattanooga, train schedules,letters to my mother, who surveyed rooms

in silence, thumbing the saw toothpiping of her apron. You write her, boy.In the bucket, jars of polish hunkered

in every shade of brown: cowhide in mud,honey-shine of lacquered oak, my brother’s armored eyes.In the tree, the bird jangled its wings,

then was quiet. And though I couldn’t seeits eye flicking across the shadows of the yard,I knew it was waiting to overhear some

song of which it wasn’t a part.Then it ducked between leaves,and I lost it from branch to branch.

It blinked on and off like a fishmoving beneath river stones and eddies,beneath sunlight white-washing a river’s surface,

and I tried to follow it, hearing their voicesthrough the bricks, though I couldn’t understandfor the house absorbed the words.