[you were]

"where love is a song settling in the night"

you were the softness of feathers
and the harsh cadence of grief,
you were the sky’s frail mists
and its glittering pools.
in the warm indigos of summer
i welcomed you home,
the sea with its engine pistons
played loud harmonics,
it wasn't the noise but quiet
i wanted most, the way i wanted you,
star silent, drifting like a boat.

[tonight]

tonight i can't write poetry,
a star is just a star.

[shadows on my bones]

"when everything is washed out like faded jeans"

i thought i could stay alive
but there were shadows on my bones,
summer fell through my lips
and washed the colours from my shirt.
i became a lizard in the
dry heat.

the sky layered greys into
clouds, told me how
expressive it could be
and then turned white.
i wasn't going to argue
but i liked it better blue!

when your heart is
full of softness it gathers
the flowers of dusk.

the sea is so far from me
now, how can i remember
a wave or the bluster of
the wind?
i am as forgetful of
shape as foam, i am
as broken as driftwood,
i am the memory of
something that never was,
an impromptu impressionist
painting in ink.

[i've not written]

i've not written for a week.
i need to visualize, feed
on an image, grow out of
immense distance, slumber
on the rocks.
i need to paint a flower
in all its frailty, gather
the skies on the horizon.
until the bright lilies
have drowned me in their
white linens i will not feel whole.
gathering, gathering the world,
its moments stormy rooks.

[love poem]

"where love is a wave that splashes on the sand"

when a heart
loves
the stars surrender
to the heavens,
the moon catches her breath
and the avenues
of silence become
voice. i follow the
path to my love,
i die for him,
i live for him,
like a spartan
in the heat of battle,
like a flower in the
mist.

[summer tide]

the moon, shrunken, faint
as pencil, as if the wild nettles
of night carried her loads.
her glazes the raptures of
dancing stars.
her stencil mark a white crescent
leant on cloud.
the trees shudder in the
wind, break their promises,
forgive no one.  
the tide listens to her rhythms,
traps them in water, distils
her victories, unwraps the dark,
stretches it out.

[out of the night]

out of the night, the softening rain dripping
from leaves and memories hanging like stars
in a northern sky, everything sank to the sea,
sinking in night and song and silence.
everywhere was still, no climbing to the dawn,
no old ghost singing winter to the sky.
it was time to leave, time for the grey ghosts
to crumble, time for the rose beds to sleep.
the morning dew is the water's flowers,
the early frost is the marbling of the earth,
we're pushed to emptiness by the iron-hinged wind,
melt in caves where the shadows lie hid.
from your hair, the glistening drops of rain,
from the air, the flight of a bird,
terrible and black the dark clouds,
where the night utters vowels its voice full of stones,
and its breath an empty pail once filled
with water and the kiss of the moon.

[grey stone sky]

grey stone sky, ghost clouds crying to the wind,
remembering the distant wave.
the moon was the whitening mists of time,
was the quiver of a musical note,
her broad branches silver seas,
her caverns quiet visions of light.
i stride the shores of oblivion where
dark ages hide, where the ocean falls,
i capture infinite moons in my
mouth, capture something bright,
something of you that i bless,
something of you that grows out
of the dark, glimmering like a night frost,
midnight stars dipped in a clear lake
and as the surface gleams and reflects,
how the water ripples in little blue tides.

[i ask you]

i ask you how the water cries, how you hold
the tide, the light, the thin light glistening.
i ask you how you bury root and earth,
how you dress the wind, how you carry
clouds in your mouth, how you drift
out of morning's ghosts, sky full,
how you drift downstream taking
part of me with you. i ask and i ask.
why do you not answer me? tomorrow
stretches her wings, tomorrow with her
tremendous oceans of fire, her dark eyes
full of hope while part of me dies.
no furnace could burn like you burn,
every whisper the dark, the infinite dark,
and that little flame hovering like a bird
a paradise higher than stars.

[the ocean dreams]

the ocean dreams...
colours like burnt kisses,
the blue mist tangles the air.
the shore shook out its creases
like old linen, fell under
the tumbling wave.
i drank the silence,
walking where the moon,
carried along by the song
of a ripple, dipped
her feet in the foam,
dancing, dancing...
beneath her ivory tongue,
a glistening jewel,
her alabaster skin
night's whitest rose,
and where the stars
wrapped december in
ghosts and the
gleaming water was the
quietest echo of love,
i could no longer bear
to be alone, and my tears
were the wilderness
and how it grew inside me,
and everything i loved was there
the wave carrying the wind
and i felt alive, as joyful
as the silver shore, a dark-pooled
painting of you, a river-eyed song.

[sad, sad eyes]

winter fed us with blood-red berries and ice clouds,
our visible breath soon colder than our lips.
i did not want to see what you had seen,
could not grow out of those sad, sad eyes.
we fell into the calm wave of circumstance
and twilight hurried from us into the dark.
hurried away like the last drop of sunlight
purples the earth, dancing on the edge of the world.
do we wait, stone-heavy, for the last tendrils
of day to melt like ice?
the fearful cold breathes like a fog,
gathers its stars of voice and hill,
gathers memories and distant dreams,
lets us forget.
are you the ghost that lies on the hill
calling to me?
are you that ghost,
whose irons soften like cloud,
whose frozen leaf trembles on the branch
waiting to fall to the whispering land?
your eyes are from the past and yet
they follow like a cold wind blasts.
your eyes, everywhere your sad eyes,
biting like a frost.

[do you dream of me?]

my love, you wear silence like a coat
and i am left drifting like a far-out wave.
the wind tangles leaf and sky.
winter is barely noticed, the moon
is a ghost of forgotten flowers where
the night sings to the starry waters,
sings of our love. everything is sailing
like a ship in a bottle, a kaleidoscope  
of brightness, gothic hill and wildflower
ruin, flowing like a silvery stream.
do you dream of me? do you burn when
the night wraps you in her cloak and the moon
unwinds the waters of the seas?
do you dream of me?

[morning]

a bird slid into the wind's
bright paths, awoke
the sound of morning, the
only elegant sound. i sprinkled you
you with the roots of the rain and
with a song sweetened by
sunlight and although you were stunted
and your blue-blossom wings were broken,
and the very earth swam in dark
floods of tears, that little piece of
love was a kingdom as reachable
as your hand touching mine.

[song]

this was a song that lingers in caverns and
caves, scented by sea rose and anemone,
lost kingdoms where we dream of the sea.

this was a song like a whale shivering
through the water, diving into the
impossible dark, with its huge tail
waving, flag-like and star-hungry,
its skin the moon's lips, in a world
with no moonlight, no brightening pools,
and only echoes of a forgotten sun.

how deep do we dive, seals of ink
and overtures of unanswerable
dark? our eyes have been betrayed
many times and the water buries us
whole, takes us to the staccato rhythms
of a ghostly tide, takes us back to
a womb woman whose prayers lie
like whispers on the water, who tells
us to hush and we hear our mother's voice.

these are wild notes that press into the
waves, and i am frightened of this song,
it is dissonant and gathered from the
rivers of night, her tombs overgrown with
wild flowers and the bones of the sea,
and she cries for the lost,
for those that were taken from her,
and she will cry for all eternity
and her tears are like breath of ice.

[winter]

winter buries her flames,
buries whispers of river and leaf,

the sea wraps turquoise into bronze,
everything is full of white bones,

the sky is an illusion of clouds,
her petticoats blue rags,

the day is as heavy as a paperweight,
as brittle as a glass flower,

the light is as naked as the trees
gold could not be more cold,

the sunlight reflects in the snow,
her amber eyes gleam,

nothing flows, nothing flowers,
nothing flows, nothing flowers,

and your smile is the sun,
a ghost as faint as watercolour,

the brush dipped in daylight,
a little part of me.

[waiting]

i stood there waiting like a
nettle with the moon's forget-me-not
eyes, wild flowers overflowing
down the little paths, i was the flower that
no one wanted, a black companion
****.
my cherry mouth was built of
forgotten orchards and swallow's wings,
while my hair was blown by the indigo wind,
the moon tap, tap, tapping on the door.

the whiteness of the land, the colours of
winter and how her song arose out of
the dark, bearing my soul like the
earth rediscovered, glistening in the
light, drawn out of hollows, the shadows
driven back, with a dry root's crazy thirst
that left me longing for rain.
the poetry could not quite free itself
from my lips, dragged me down to
the earth where i staggered with
the lost and the weary. i tried to get back,
but all I could do was sink into the frozen waste.
no, the poetry would not free itself, and
still I waited but it didn't seem to matter
now because leaf and moon and the
frosting that covered my body had left
me like a pale ghost in the wilderness
and all I wanted to do was sink into
the cold cornered night, sink and forget.

[moonflower]

out of the water, the water of ghost pools,
you rose, naked figurehead, oh, flower of night.
an impressionist's brush shook the water
like light reflected on moonstone.
****** of prisms, flowering, flowering,
lost ocean of star voices, forgotten star.
you sang and the night ran towards the sea,
you blossomed and the night became a wanderer.
nectar of the gods, sky-visionary, you sink into
the night like the petal of a rose, the grass almond-
eyed and whispering to you her dreams, fluttering
like a butterfly; little moonflower, you gather
the shadows and the song of the dark, the
drift of the clouds is your bare feet running,
the drift of the clouds, the cold sea crashing
in the harbour, the drift of the clouds,
the incredible overflowing of sky, poet-
ink and straying hair, the drift of
the clouds, everything that scatters
like you on the wind.

[we seek...]

we seek the ocean in the palm of our hands,
breath is the frailties of a winter sky,

the stars are reflections in a mirror of bone.

we are carried by the wind into strange avenues
where we fall like leaves, dance into the indigos

of the washed out sky, haunt the dimming light like night
blossoms and dies, her rivers burning like fire.

we awaken in the eastern
sky washing slumber from our eyes, yawning

and day drops her heavy nets into the waters
of the sun and drowns out the voice of the dark.

flowers settle in the morning, capturing
the silence of the hills in petals of water and light,

and we drink passion and ink, we drink the colours
of our emotions and walk without hesitation towards the light.

[song of the wind]

the wind has something of your wild song,
whispers in a voice i knew long ago.

there is nothing here accept the empty wind,
nothing of you and me,

i could paint the silence with the moon,
kiss your mouth, touch your hair....

but we are forgotten like this song
of the wind, and in the emptiness

i can hear the faltering wave
fall against the belly of the sand

running like the white clouds
race through the sky,

where the stars fall like old ruins,
this ghost dance of stars, these crashing,

crashing waves. where is the freedom
of the falling water?

not in the breath of the earth,
not in the silvering of the sea.

[you are neither]

my love, you are neither the morning
with her bright unwinding hills

or the night, with her nets of silver stars,
you are not the sea whispering.

you are hidden from the world, an alpine
rose that nobody sees.

you flower like the sky makes its way
out of the dark, her archipelagos  

thrown to the wind, there to discover
like a frost that whitens the earth and

leaves its footprints in the leaves.

you are neither the moon, my love,
that waits at your feet

nor the sun that burns like the
summer with her mute fire. you

are none of these things and yet all  
these things carry me to you,

like a drifting cloud longing
for the waters of the night.

[those brief moments of heaven]

the land was a slumbering bird that had not yet opened
its eyes. the morning roared like a thunder

cloud and i gazed at the sky with her cornflower blues
and orchestral flutes, her dark bones whitening

in the yellow-threaded light. silence wrapped me like
a shawl, and love settled on my shoulders like

a bird. it was too early for the swallow to return
with its spring-tinted wings, the winter settled

in the nooks and crannies of the earth, sweet
as your mouth, crisp and cold as the ashen north.

and while you lay beside me, warm, nocturnal
and dreaming of the sea, i kissed your lips

and told you to hush, not because you had spoken but
because night had been so gentle to you that i

wanted to keep you wrapped in her star-scented arms.

[silence]

silence moored like a boat in the harbour,
and you flew against the horizon like a bird  

until my mouth was the night with its hungry stars
and you were the sea wind.

you were the night flowering, a ripple on
the surface of the water, the dreams of the ocean...

your eyes told me that history is made of a
a thousand bleeding wounds, your lips that

kisses are petals falling from a rose
and that we wait like old moons for night

to melt on the shore and set us free, we wait,
unquestionably free, for her gathering of

iris and blue bird, for her beautiful
and melancholy song.

[february]

the light, the faint curtain that draws across day,
far from night's shadows, creature of fire,

revolves, drops white nets into the sea-earth,
where ice and the aching frost cry out

and the soil hardens with its harsh, freezing edge.

we are deaf and blind, numb of limb
like the thin trees and the specter-sky,

blue and forlorn, dreaming our winter dreams...

and through the cold walls i can hardly draw
a smile, sad as a silver leaf the autumn forgot.

it is you who lifts me from the ground, somehow,
like an april shoot seeking the sun, somehow,

my bones as frail as a bird and yet
when the air stirs my blood and i stare into

the amber notes of the wind, the unforgiving land
buckles and breaks and i return to the

kernel of your heart and even the icy
lakes and the weighty forest you loved

under your skin that the light waits to
warm, forget their cold death, breathe

like summer returning to a distant shore.

[empty of light]

there is nothing of you in this late hour,
i have no voice to wrap you in tenderness,
and i wait for your arrival like a starless sky,
empty of light, the ocean's forgetful voyage,
the sinking wave coaxed to grow out of the dark.
the trees are motionless, branches fall silent in the night,
like ghosts against the sky. i am empty of light,
drawn out of memories and blue air,
a crystal that breaks, bound to the wide earth
and the white dust of immeasurable hills. i think i am
still, small as a bird, and i know that i long for you,
that the hunger never leaves me for long, colouring
dry paper with the gleam of a harbour-like moon.

[you grew]

you grew out of the tangling black,
those carefree tides that lead to the moon.

the stars i thought were silver knots
would not unwind, danced on the horizon,

softened like the white mist that gathered
the sky and the dark rose of your eyes.

you filled with the quiet of the hills
and i watched as your ghost

started to tell me goodbye, that
ghost whose seas were frozen in the night,

the ghost i loved, and everything that
was fire in me carved the words into

the night's magnolia net and the words
were; " i don't want you to go".


[loving you...where love is a pretty handwritten page]

loving you is like waiting for the spring,
the love that winds around my fingers

a stream that will fill with the most beautiful light.
when you open your eyes to my kisses,

i fill with the summer and the bright stars,
so chill with loneliness, leave.

i forget that the moon hangs like a
silver leaf in a sky of swallow's song,

while the rose that winter stole,
that died in my lovelorn arms,

left like the impressionist the water loved,
until all i could see was the dreams

of the water, and all i could feel was
the sleeping of the dark.

[winter faded]

winter faded like old parchment, drawn in charcoal
the trees waited for the inevitable colours of spring.

your voice coloured silence and left me standing
away from the crowd with my head inclined to yours,

listening to you, the shadows swept away and your
voice like the moonlight, the blue inks of the sea.

i watched you unwind night skies and the night stars
that burnt in the rivery realms of lost ruins and whispering

dreams, fell like dead men before your passion and there
was no reasoning with what you believed and you had

no compassion for the world. hatred fired up before
my forgiveness and you could not forgive. how many

oceans scattered their flowers and light, how many
armies fell before the burning amber of your eyes?

[i thought i understood the water]

i thought i understood the water,
the silver whispers of stream,
dying the way sadness sighs  
like a star.

the water didn't bring me to
you or you to me.

you were not the shimmer of a
fish.

you were the light reflecting,
bold splashes of colour
on a bold canvas. you

were night when i could
hardly bear the night and you
fell through me

like twilight bringing black
marble moons and watery ghosts.

i thought i understood the water.
i thought the stars painted your
reflection on my lips,

but the silver whispers were not
sad they were happy and
i wondered how i ever
found them sad.

[where]

where every poem starts
and every ends,
where we are stunned,
where we are thirsty and the thirst is
never quenched,
where there is something that breaks
and i can't bring back although it
burns me to dust, love was not our
miracle but the dying was, the flames
never quenched like the blues of the stars
little rivers,
don't bring me fire to bury me in flame,
bring me oceans of black ink to colour
the night, bring me your love.

[sometimes]

distant, moon curves, star light,
dark as the turning where innumerable
waves follow on the tide, the light
in ribbons, the light gold leaf and
flickering amber, the light tenuous
and gentleness, slumbering with her whims
and her sleep of blue earth, and air,
breath of joy, breath of dust.
Night, holds us and her whispers are
a forgotten song, and night is like
the streams of water that awaken with
winter and her cool rivers of air. Night with
her paradise far from the gathering
of limb and ledge, far from the leaves
of the dusk where the shadows tremble and the
water turns itself into tears, and we hear the
ghosts cry to the dark sky,
sometimes we hear the ghosts cry.

[there is nothing]

"where love is the turning tide..."

it was if i was hanging upside
down, and my eyes softened
against shadows of sky and earth.
there is a paradise that waits in
the spring blossom and the bright
lights of the trees, in the freedom
of water and the soon to open eyes of a
winter girl who wakes with the morning.
there is nothing of you in the frail
notes of a song bird or in the deep
reaches of sea and the sky-asking's of the sun.
there is nothing of you and yet i  
want there to be, i want the emotions and
i want sorrowful skies and rivers of blue ink,
seas of summer, careless nights,
freedom that sweeps away the old
cobwebs and weeps to the stars
and you, i want you wrapped through
the night like a blue lily.

[sleep]

sleep was the only sanctuary, was a
flower on the water, was the moonlit
ripples as night gathered her stars and her
promises, her indigos and golds.
i wasn't sure where the images would
take me, i could not surrender to them,
or they to me, my soul wrapped memories
into clouds, drifted with them and the
sadness that was the poetry today was
a song with so many myriads of water.
the water that filled with longing,
the water that poured into love.

Oh, the dark

oh, the dark falls down empty
her cloth burning gold like a harvest moon.
you conquer and you fall because
the poetry dreamt for you because
the last tear drop is not a river it
is a tide, and you were drunk with love
and love for poetry. oh, watch how the
darkness falls, how it swallows star
and shadow how it melts and colours the
night with topaz.    
i could not die for you or for love, but
i knew what it is to burn,
the dry heat, the unbelievable
fire that burns for words and for you,
the unbelievable fire.
i would burn
a blue star like an ocean breeze
scatters the night as we lay spellbound,
tiny drops of water falling, falling.
you were passionate and i loved
all the longing in your voice, the poetry  
broken like the winter, full
of strange beauty. if we were to drown
your lips would be my ghost and i
would long for you until summer was eternity
and the dust of her irons sprinkled on the water.
if i was to live, it could only be with you,
forgotten i would bury my head like autumn
leaves dust the forest, but remembered i
would burn, all gold and blanched gaunt
like a lily, a river winding through the past
like the thames folds around london,
yes, i would burn as you burn for me.

I followed him down the trail until we got to the mouth of the mines. The life and energy of the surrounding maples and birches seemed to come to a still and then die as we walked closer, closer. The air was cold and dark and damp and smelt of mold and moths. Delvos stepped into the darkness anyways.
“Well, girl, you coming or aren’t you?”
I could see his yellowed tobacco teeth form into a slimy smile as I stepped out of the sun. It was still inside. The canary chirped.
“This tunnel is just the mouth to over two hundred others exactly like it. Stay close. Last thing I need this month is National Geographic on my *** for losing one of their puppet girls.”
“Delvos, ****. I have two masters degrees.” He rolled his eyes.
“Spare me.” He trotted off around the corner to the left, whistling.
“I survived alone in the jungles of Bolivia alone for two months chasing an Azara’s Spinetail. I climbed the tallest mountain in Nepal shooting Satyr Tragopans along the cliff faces. In Peru I…” Suddenly I felt the weight of the darkness. In my blinding anger I lost track of his lantern. I stopped, my heartbeat picked up, and I tried to remind myself of what I did in Peru.
I followed a Diurnal Peruvian Pygmy-Owl across the gravel tops of the Andes Mountains, no light but the Southern Cross and waning moon above. I am not scared of darkness. I am not scared of darkness.
I stopped to listen. Somewhere in front of me the canary chirped.

When I first got the job in Vermont I couldn’t have been more frustrated. Mining canaries? Never had I ever ‘chased’ a more mundane bird. Nonetheless, when Jack Reynolds sends you on a shoot you don’t say no, so I packed up my camera bag and hoped on the next plane out of Washington.
“His name is John Delvos.” Jack said. He handed me the manila case envelope. “He’s lived in rural Vermont his entire life. Apparently his family bred the canaries for the miners of the Sheldon Quarry since the early twenties. When the accident happened the whole town basically shut down. There were no canaries in the mines the day the gas killed the miners. His mother died in a fire of some sort shortly after. The town blamed the Delvos family and ran them into the woods. His father built a cabin and once his father died, Delvos continued to breed the birds. He ships them to other mining towns across the country now. We want to run a piece about the inhumanity of breeding animals to die so humans won’t.” I stood in silence in front of his deep mahogany desk, suddenly aware of the lack of make-up on my face. He smiled, “You’re leaving on Tuesday.”
“Yes sir.”
“Don’t look so smug, Lila. This may not be the most exotic bird you’ve shot but the humanity of this piece has the potential to be a cover story. Get the shots, write the story.”

“Do you understand the darkness now, Ms. Rivers? Your prestigious masters degrees don’t mean **** down here.” Delvos reappeared behind the crack of his match in a side tunnel not twenty yards in front of me. He relit the oily lantern and turned his back without another word. I reluctantly followed deeper into the damp darkness.
“Why were there no canaries in the mine on, you know, that day?” The shadows of the lantern flickered against the iron canary cage chained on his hip and the yellow bird hopped inside.
“I was nine, Ms. Rivers. I didn’t understand much at the time.” We turned right into the next tunnel and our shoes crunched on jagged stones. All the stones were black.
“But surely you understand now?”
The canary chirped.

When I first got to Sheldon and began asking about the location of the Delvos’ cabin you would have thought I was asking where the first gate to hell was located. Mothers would smile and say, “Sorry, Miss, I can’t say,” and hurriedly flock their children in the opposite direction. After two hours of polite refusals I gave up. I spent the rest of the first day photographing the town square. It was quaint; old stone barbershops surrounded by oaks and black squirrels, a western themed whiskey bar, and a few greasy spoon restaurants interspersed in-between. I booked a room in the Walking Horse Motel for Wednesday night, determined to get a good nights sleep and defeat this towns fear of John Delvos tomorrow.
My room was a tiny one bed square with no TV. Surprise, surprise. At least I had my camera and computer to entertain myself. I reached into the side of my camera bag and pulled out my Turkish Golds and Macaw-beak yellow BIC. I stepped out onto the dirt in front of my door and lit up. I looked up and the stars stole all the oxygen surrounding me. They were dancing and smiling above me and I forgot Delvos, Jack, and all of Sheldon except it’s sky. Puffing away, I stepped farther and farther from my door and deeper into the darkness of night. The father into the darkness the more dizzying the stars dancing became.
“Ma’am? Everything okay?”
Startled, I dropped my cigarette on the ground and the ember fell off.
“I’m sorry, sir. I was just, um, the stars…” I snuffed out the orange glow in the dirt with my boot and extended my hand, “Lila Waters, and you are?”
“Ian Benet. I haven’t seen you around here before, Ms. Waters, are you new to town?”
“I’m here for work. I’m a bird photographer and journalist for National Geographic. I’m looking for John Delvos but I’m starting to think he’s going to be harder to track than a Magpie Robin.”
The stars tiptoed in their tiny circles above in the silence. Then, they disappeared with a spark as Ian lit up his wooden pipe. It was a light colored wood, stained with rich brown tobacco and ash. He passed me his matches, smiling.
“What do you want with that old *******? Don’t tell me National Geographic is interested in the Delvos canaries.”
I lit up another stick and took a drag. “Shocking, right?”
“Actually, it’s about time their story is told.” Benet walked to the wooden bench to our left and patted the seat beside him. I walked over. “The Delvos canaries saved hundreds of Sheldonian lives over the years. But the day a crew went into the mines without one, my father came out of the ground as cold as when we put him back into it in his coffin.”
I sat in silence, unsure what to say. “Mr. Benet, I’m so sorry…”
“Please, just Ian. My father was the last Mr. Benet.”
We sat on the wooden bench, heat leaving our bodies to warm the dead wood beneath our legs. I shivered; the stars dance suddenly colder and more violent.
“Delvos canaries are martyrs, Ms. Waters. This whole town indebted to those tiny yellow birds, but nobody cares to remember that anymore.”
“Can you tell me where I can find Mr. Delvos and his, erm, martyrs?” The ember of my second cigarette was close to my pinching fingertips.
“Follow me.” Ian stood up and walked to the edge of the woods in front of us. We crunched the cold dust beneath our feet, making me aware of how silent it was. Ian stopped at a large elm and pointed, “See that yellow notch?” Sure enough, there was a notch cut and dyed yellow at his finger’s end. “If you follow true north from this tree into the woods you’ll find this notch about every fifty yards or so. Follow the yellow and it’ll spit you out onto the Delvos property.”
“Thank you, Ian. I really can’t begin to tell you how thankful I am to find out where to find this elusive Mr. Delvos and his canaries.”
“You don’t have to,” he knocked the ash out of his pipe against the tree, “Just do those birds justice in your article. Remember, martyrs. Tell old Delvos Ian Benet sends his regards.” He turned and walked back to the motel and I stood and watched in silence. It was then I realized I hadn’t heard a single bird since I got to Sheldon. The stars dance was manic above me as I walked back to my room and shut the door.

The canary chirped and Delvos stopped.
“This is a good place to break out fast. Sit.”
I sat obediently, squirming around until the rocks formed a more comfortable nest around my bony hips. We left for the mines as the stars were fading in the vermillion Vermont sky this morning and had been walking for what seemed like an eternity. I was definitely ready to eat. He handed me a gallon Ziploc bag from his backpack filled with raisins, nuts, various dried fruits, and a stiff piece of bread. I attacked the food like a raven.
“I was the reason no canaries entered the mines that day, Ms. Waters.” Delvos broke a piece of his bread off and wrapped it around a dried piece of apricot, or maybe apple. I was suddenly aware of my every motion and swallowed, loudly. I crinkled into my Ziploc and crunched on the pecans I dug out, waiting.
“Aren’t you going to ask why?”
“I’m not a parrot, Mr. Delvos, I don’t answer expectedly on command. You’ll tell me if you want.” I hurriedly stuffed a fistful of dried pears into my mouth.
Delvos chuckled and my nerves eased, “You’ve got steel in you, Ms. Rivers, I’ll give you that much.”
I nodded and continued cramming pears in my mouth.
“I was only nine. The canaries were my pets, all of them. I hated when Dad would send them into the mines to die for men I couldn’t give two ***** about. It was my birthday and I asked for an afternoon of freedom with my pets and Dad obliged. I was in the aviary with pocketfuls of sunflower-seeds. Whenever I threw a handful into the air above me, the air came to life with flickering yellow brushes and songs of joy. It was the happiest I have ever been, wholly surrounded and protected by my friends. Around twelve thirty that afternoon the Sheriff pulled up, lights ablaze. The blue and red lights stilled my yellow sky to green again and that’s when I heard the shouting. He cuffed my Dad on the hood of the car and Mom was crying and pushing her fists into the sheriff’s chest. I didn’t understand at all. The Sheriff ended up putting Mom in the car too and they all left me in the aviary. I sat there until around four that afternoon before they sent anyone to come get me.”
Delvos took a small bite of his bread and chewed a moment. “No matter how many handfuls of seeds I threw in the air after that, the birds wouldn’t stir. They wouldn’t even sing. I think they knew what was happening.”
I was at a loss for words so of course I blurted, “I didn’t see an aviary at your house…”
Delvos laughed. “Someone burnt down the house I was raised in the next week while we were sleeping. Mom died that night. The whole dark was burning with screams and my yellow canaries were orange and hot against the black sky. That’s the only night I’ve seen black canaries and the only night I’ve heard them scream.”
I swallowed some mixed nuts and they rubbed against my dry throat.
“They never caught the person. A week later Dad took the remainder of the birds and we marched into the woods. We worked for months clearing the land and rebuilding our lives. We spent most of the time in silence, except for the canary cries. When the house was finally built and the birds little coops were as well, Dad finally talked. The only thing he could say was ‘Canaries are not the same as a Phoenix, John. Not the same at all.”
The canary chirped, still only visible by the lanterns flame. Not fully yellow, I realized, here in the mines, but not fully orange either.

When I first walked onto John Delvos’ property on Thursday morning he was scattering feed into the bird coops in the front of his cabin. Everything was made of wood and still wet with the morning’s dew.
“Mr. Delvos?” He spun around, startled, and walked up to me a little too fast.
“Why are you here? Who are you?”
“My name is Lila Waters, sir, I am a photographer and journalist for National Geographic Magazine and we are going to run an article on your canaries.”
“Not interested”
“Please, sir, can I ask you just a few quick questions as take a couple pictures of your, erm, martyrs?”
His eyes narrowed and he walked up to me, studying my face with an intense, glowering gaze. He spit a mouthful of dip onto the ground without breaking eye contact. I shifted my camera bag’s weight to the other shoulder.
“Who told you to call them that?”
“I met Ian Benet last night, he told me how important your birds are to this community, sir. He sends his regards.”
Delvos laughed and motioned for me to follow as he turned his back. “You can take pictures but I have to approve which ones you publish. That’s my rule.”
“Sir, it’s really not up to me, you see, my boss, Jack Reynolds, is one of the CEO’s for the magazine and he...”
“Those are my rules, Ms. Waters.” He turned and picked back up the bucket of seed and began to walk back to the birds. “You want to interview me then we do it in the mine. Be back here at four thirty in the morning.”
“Sir…?”
“Get some sleep, Ms. Waters. You’ll want to be rested for the mine.” He turned, walked up his wooden stairs, and closed the door to his cabin.
I was left alone in the woods and spent the next hour snapping pictures of the little, yellow canaries in their cages. I took a couple pictures of his house and the surrounding trees, packed up my camera and trekked back to my motel.

“You finished yet?” Delvos stood up and the memory of his green and brown wooded homestead fled from my memory as the mine again consumed my consciousness. Dark, quiet, and stagnant. I closed the Ziploc and stuffed the bag, mainly filled with the raisins I sifted through, into my pocket.
Delvos grunted and the canary flapped in its cage as he stood again and, swinging the lantern, rounded another corner. The path we were on began to take a noticeable ***** downward and the moisture on the walls and air multiplied.
The canary chirped.
The lantern flickered against the moist, black stones, sleek and piled in the corners we past. The path stopped ahead at a wall of solid black and brown Earth.
The canary chirped twice.
It smelt of clay and mildew and Delvos said, “Go on, touch it.”
I reached my hand out, camera uselessly hanging like a bat over my shoulder. The rock was cold and hard. It felt dead.
The Canary was flitting its wings in the cage now, chirping every few seconds.
“This is the last tunnel they were digging when the gas under our feet broke free from hell and killed those men.”
Delvos hoisted the lantern above our heads, illuminating the surrounding gloom. All was completely still and even my own vapor seemed to fall out of my mouth and simply die. The canary was dancing a frantic jig, now, similar to the mating dance of the Great Frigate Bird I shot in the Amazon jungle. As I watched the canary and listened to its small wings beat against the cold metal cage I begin to feel dizzy. The bird’s cries had transformed into a scream colder than fire and somehow more fierce.
The ability to fly is what always made me jealous of birds as a child, but as my temple throbbed and the canary danced I realized I was amiss. Screaming, yellow feathers whipped and the entire inside of the cage was instantaneously filled. It was beautiful until the very end. Dizzying, really.
Defeated, the canary sank to the floor, one beaten wing hanging out of the iron bars at a most unnatural angle. Its claws were opening and closing, grasping the tainted cave air, or, perhaps, trying to push it away. Delvos unclipped the cage and sat it on the floor in the space between us, lantern still held swaying above his head. The bird was aflame now, the silent red blood absorbing into the apologetic, yellow feathers. Orange, a living fire. I pulled out my camera as I sat on the ground beside the cage. I took a few shots, the camera’s clicks louder than the feeble chirps sounding out of the canary’s tattered, yellow beak. My head was spinning. Its coal-black eyes reflected the lantern’s flame above. I could see its tiny, red tongue in the bottom of its mouth.
Opening.
Closing.
Opening, wider, too wide, then,
Silence.


I felt dizzy. I remember feeling the darkness surround me; it felt warm.

“I vaguely remember Delvos helping me to my feet, but leaving the mine was a complete haze.” I told the panel back in D.C., “It wasn’t until we had crossed the stream on the way back to the cabin that I began to feel myself again. Even then, I felt like I was living a dream. When we got back to the cabin the sight of the lively yellow canaries in their coops made me cry. Delvos brought me a bottle of water and told me I needed to hit the trail because the sun set early in the winter, so I le

Love, the world
Suddenly turns, turns color. The streetlight
Splits through the rat's tail
Pods of the laburnum at nine in the morning.
It is the Arctic,

This little black
Circle, with its tawn silk grasses - babies hair.
There is a green in the air,
Soft, delectable.
It cushions me lovingly.

I am flushed and warm.
I think I may be enormous,
I am so stupidly happy,
My Wellingtons
Squelching and squelching through the beautiful red.

This is my property.
Two times a day
I pace it, sniffing
The barbarous holly with its viridian
Scallops, pure iron,

And the wall of the odd corpses.
I love them.
I love them like history.
The apples are golden,
Imagine it ----

My seventy trees
Holding their gold-ruddy *****
In a thick gray death-soup,
Their million
Gold leaves metal and breathless.

O love, O celibate.
Nobody but me
Walks the waist high wet.
The irreplaceable
Golds bleed and deepen, the mouths of Thermopylae.