Laura Van Prooyen: Asking of the Bird What it Cannot Offer

The grackles could be a figment. So too, the outdoor café

and the couple under the tree that clatters with noise.

It is morning. With certainty I can say: Here is the sun.

But the man at the table looks like the one I love

who once watched me cut our grass

as grackles swooped in to pick our lawn.

The way he holds his toast is familiar. And look

how he reaches for the woman’s hand.

She is turned from him and toward the river, stirring

her coffee, clinking the spoon.

I note this man. And the proximity

                       of the woman to the bridge.

It is then the grackles lift like smoke from a house fire

to fan across the sky.

If this is imagined and the rustling that remains

            is another black bird, I ask it to say it is so.

Published 2009. Is the portentous language (It is morning. With certainty I can say: Here is the sun) mocking or humourless? The poem trembles between bathos and pretentiousess until the final two lines, which resolve nothing but open a door. We can't see what's on the other side of the door, but we can see that it's there.