Little Bird-Gods
How would we live
if we knew what
the power line birds
gossip to each other
when dusk turns her
vague smile into
a long elegy of night
& the dead (newborns
of weightlessness)
take shadows for strolls
through parks & down
potholed side streets
without hiding from us:
the alive! the ones
really lost (to ourselves
to each other) no
matter how many
times the world
(usually a bird) reminds
us of our inseparability
the delicate circuitry
that wires each living
thing to every other
living thing all of us
breathing beating
loving as one & how
would we live
if we knew &
(oh god, little bird)
how do we live now?
Ashley Steineger is a holistic psychologist who believes poetry is the language of healing. She is the author of The Poetry Therapy Workbook (2023), and her poetry has appeared in The Night Heron Barks, Apricity Press, The Lumiere Review, and Palette Poetry, among others. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of Net nominee, and currently lives and writes out of Raleigh, NC, where she enjoys forest bathing, collecting tattoos, and untranslatable words.
Amethyst Review 