I wonder if birds have dreams, if any bird
is famous, if birds have to remind themselves
flying is what matters, no show-off
loop-de-loops, no need to be the one
framed in the binoculars’ glass.
Open the window, birds call and answer.
Beyond the window, the wetlands
where my husband and I walk our dogs.
Some days I force the view—blue sky
and blue marsh and blue birds. But it’s beautiful
even in winter, better the waterfowl
than the hawk. We follow the snow,
no sense of time—we are 29, we are nine,
we are 80 lying down to die. A memory
before it happens, it is the tunnel and it is the light.
–
Melissa Fite Johnson is the author of three full-length collections, most recently Midlife Abecedarian (Riot in Your Throat, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, HAD, Whale Road Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Melissa teaches high school English in Lawrence, KS, where she and her husband live with their dogs.