Micheline Maylor: Bird at the University

Four months, it takes, for the sinew

to release bones from skeleton.

A whole semester.

From August, I walk back and forth past the bird

one hundred and twenty-two times.

I think of me and you, us,

while this elegant architecture called bird

disintegrates.

He’s belly-up, beak to the north,

wings splayed to the poles.

In two days, his eyes are sockets,

in four days, his under-feathers scatter to the east.

The gentle wind detonates

a downy bomb on still, green grass

only a few stray flight-feathers cling to the skeleton

in the mud beside the late pansies.

November snow covers everything.

Stray footprints press him tighter to the earth.

Much exists in my lexicon that was not there yesterday,

last week, last month, last year.

In this new normal, grief accumulates

with that first rime

with that first staying snow.

Yet, like the bird,

I learn to relax,

wings open,

to all these elements.

Published 2010. Maylor became Calgary's poet laureate this year. The poem itself acts out the "learning to relax" at its conclusion.