Poems+from+Hearnsberger

Passage
John M. Roderick

He was older and I stood behind him in frozen pride, Straining my eyes into the towering branches, Unable to see what he saw.

His hand coiled around the air rifle In a serpentine embrace That welded his face against the gunstock.

“What is it?” broke the silence But not his concentration Or his slow steady aim.

The shot was more like a puff than a bang, A soft sudden breath of air That sent its lethal message through the leaves.

“You missed it!” I said, Though I didn’t know what. “I never miss, kid.”

And then to prove he was right A small sparrow fell to the ground With blood at its throat.

My own blood surged To be so close to death… But the sparrow lived!

“It’s not dead!” caught in my throat As the bird’s heart Pumped out a ribbon of crimson.

“Not yet,” he said And squeezed a thumb into its throat until I could not breathe.

**Forgive My Guilt**
Robert P. Tristram Coffin Not always sure what things called sins may be, I am sure of one sin I have done. It was years ago, and I was a boy, I lay in the frostflowers with a gun, The air ran blue as the flowers, I held my breath, Two birds on golden legs slim as dream things Ran like quicksilver on the golden sand, My gun went off, they ran with broken wings Into the sea, I ran to fetch them in, But they swam with their heads high out to sea, They cried like two sorrowful high flutes, With jagged ivory bones where wings should be.

For days I heard them when I walked that headland Crying out to their kind in the blue, The other plovers were going over south On silver wings leaving these broken two. The cries went out one day; but I still hear them Over all the sounds of sorrow in war or peace I ever have heard, time cannot drown them, Those slender flutes of sorrow never cease. Two airy things forever denied the air! I never knew how their lives at last were spilt, But I have hoped for years all that is wild, Airy, and beautiful will forgive my guilt.