Requiem for a Thrush

Last October I found a thrush dead on the asphalt outside my downtown studio.  I scooped up the olive-brown bird — limp 

but still so exquisite.  Then placing it on my drawing table, I studied those intricate feathers around beak and eye, while sketching 

its stiffened scaly feet.  And I couldn't help but think about the difference between natural death and the senseless death of road-kill.  

It then occurred to me that I might one day create a video with Dan’s poem, “If I Were GOD,” as a requiem to all those creatures 

who die from our blundering ways. 

                                                                                                                                        — Suzanne

                                                                                                                   


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     If I Were GOD . . .

Thrushes would not plunge

       through ice-storms, snapping

                   off those hulking towers

                          I’d allowed to rise

& thrive, nor suck into

       great engines streaking

                    shrilly overhead —

                           nor would I let them

slap against the blind

       herd of smeared windshields

                    zapping glibly through

                           VAST DAYLIGHT on My

thoroughfares below.  Nor

      would they perish in lost flocks

                    flung to chill waves

                             by shocking shifts

of climate that, when dreamy,

       I’d allowed.  I’d beg Myself: “No

                    more.  No more mistakes.” 

                          But in My SECOND

COVENANT, I’d now so much

       more carefully devise, of balmy

                    days of Grace for feathered sprites

       so intricately fashioned on

                  the third day of My ART,

                          I’d touch their slumping

spirits with hushed sighs of mild

        breeze, those fragile bodies

                    stammering with aches so fine

                            they’d soothe / as, chirring,

they’d float down through sunlit

        updrafts, buoying a most gradual

                  

                   descent . . . till sweeping through

                           the tree-limbs, past those

 bare nests where their brief lives

        had begun, they’d settle

                     oh so lightly
                                into brush.                               

  

sketchbook page, thrush

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"If I Were GOD" was first published in Ascent, Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota.