Cardinals Don’t Know
a poem
Cardinals Don’t Know
Cardinals don’t know we point at them
and say oooo inside our mad heads.
Someone has always died, you know,
and someone always tells you
about seeing red birds, blue birds, dimes.
You know it gets stuck in your mind—
stuck up in there.
Then you see one:
peck peck peck at the ground,
fly right by, just living.
They don’t know how reverent they are.
Red birds appear just like love.
When my father is at my house,
my mother, a red bird, comes to the backyard.
We wave at her.
I see her sometimes in the car when I am sad,
at the park, around town.
I see her like a message,
a sign that whispers:
you are not alone.
I am freaking out that I read
during courtship the male bird,
the most beautiful of the two,
feeds seeds to the female—
beak to beak,
beak to beak.
My heart is singing.
My mother would open pistachios
with her full red mouth,
and then hand me the nut.
I was once a baby bird.
Love is between the mouth.
But cardinals don’t know
how they change moments,
how we gasp.
They just sing out—
clear, whistled song patterns.
They just keep singing and showing up,
much like the dead in our heads.
-ATS