The Secret Lives of Birds

I dreamed that the sky wore a cloak of birds
coming and going by the armload.
The thick quilt of them gathering—

filling the woods, gracing the hills, warning
the graveyards. One bird catches
in the wet corner of my eye. It is red

among the white rest of them—
a brick on my chest, while the others float
into other dreams, those filled with color, looming

in the souls that sleep tonight. But instead of red,
the one who visits you is grey, or blue,
or orange—meaning something else to you,

to her, to the neighbor. While the rest, blank.
The white of the eye carries a message
we do not know. It is the iris that bears witness—

here, a vermilion flycatcher in the bushel
thick of magnolias cut too soon. I recognize
the fledgling for my own little lost organ—

the small red bird fluttering and flapping,
its desperate being crawls into my ribs.
The blood rushes to my head to wake me.

I try to remember what it was saying of pain,
of pleasure. Its wings throbbing and prodding me
toward what I've yet to find in the morning—

the day, beating and blooming
bigger than the red thing inside me
ever could. Or grey in you, or blue in her.

Stacey Tran lives in Portland, OR. Her poems have appeared in Anemone Sidecar, elimae, Word Riot, and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook Smoking at Night & Other Poems (sitsaw press & publishing, 2010).