Poetry

Ebenezer Street School

There used to be a crack in that wall
where lightning struck or an earthquake
eased its way in-between the cement and plaster,
carved hieroglyphs in a language you couldn’t speak,
a hole where sparrows nest in summer
bring twigs and glue them with mud and saliva
I stick consonant to vowel and form a word
my mother does not understand,
the sparrows chirp language into nest,
dried grass and feathers keep their eggs until they hatch,
then fly renting the place to insects and rodents
tiny creatures  nibbling twigs burrow in the wall.
There was an opening in the hull of that airplane
a gap that sealed and opened up, each letter kept dropping
one by one. I handed in my passport with no language left to utter.
That was the true door, as narrow as that crack,
where ghosts squeezed through after the flood
and dirty water penetrated the building’s very foundations
then rose, a tide not linked to the moon but to a wall,
and two pairs of vocal chords burrowed deep in the bricks.
Dale Dyke Dam collapsed some nine miles west in 1864
as suddenly as that plane dropped into that air pocket.
There is a gap on the ground where the Island broke
from the mainland through a flood 8000 years ago.
From the air you can see a thin fissure
you pass it easily without feeling its weight or depth
then descend, you enter the country constricted
through a slit in the wall, where two doors slide apart,
then you smell the sparrows, feathers, and a damp
British breath of air upturns your umbrella.
Currents blow away your nest twig by twig,
soon there is a barren crack in that old school wall
where if you wait long enough you hear
water drip, blurting dust particles out
and mute chicks in nests
twitch as their feathers
come through.

Veronica Fibisan