Glaciology

Theodicy

20 Theodicy A fresh grief bouncing in from satellite; Sarah on the phone by the back windows, The back of our house nearly all Glass. She tries to be calm For the husband of the friend dying But he is breaking. The same Raw words rise and assemble Every day—in waves crossing thin air On the way down to rooms private Or public, hands gripping table edges With sudden force, lights Flickering inside—why not say it?— Souls. Then a bird slams into the window In full flight, a feathered punch, Falls to the deck outside, three feet From Sarah, who leaps up And paints a shriek across the room. It’s a woodpecker, a downy, Black and white, surely dead From blunt illusion. “Get him away!” Sarah yells, her hand cupped to the phone, “Put him in the grass!” When I go Look closely the bird is alive, His wings bowed slightly and curved Around him like a robe. His beak, Surgical, thin, black, opens and closes. 21 One eye drifts back and forth in its Socket dumbly, like the bubble In a level. I wonder if I should Move him at all—I don’t want to make His ending worse. Surely it is sin, Whatever sin is, to add to suffering by hand. But it’s also hubris to believe We are only agents of suffering— Glass where there should be air. Locked In mind, we suffer more by mind— Knowledge of endings before Endings. God is mute in the middle Of this argument, and in the Beginning, and at the end. Aleda Shirley is the woman’s name; poet, wife, Daughter, friend. Husband Mike’s Been all love for her for years, then years Of illness, then love for days Left now, weeks at most. Sarah, off The phone, gives me the hapless rest. She’ll Call other friends we share, then We’ll all wait, holding what we know. The universe weighs less. Though it means Nothing—strictly speaking, it’s a story— Here’s the ending: the bird vanishes. ...