Birds Have No Place Here

This is a poem about not death.
The way that doors and lights
can close that thing from our lives.
The bright order which follows
snowplows and erasers through
the night. The quiet measurements
that chiming bells make of distance.
The taste of metal flashed with sun.

But already it is obvious
that there is nothing living here.

That birds have no place here,
given their propensity to fly off,
to drown in the blue sky and fall
into secret groves of spruce.
That children cannot dwell here
goes without saying. Their faces
still so radiant and troubled
from their recent emergence.
And love. That word which forms
a funeral on the lips.

That empty house, filled with sun,
the windows open, flies buzzing.