Lucia Perillo / To Nightingales

 

To Nightingales

by Lucia Perillo

There is a bird for just about any kind of grief:
loon for the operatic grief, woodpecker for grief that comes like a hammer
and nightingales for the grief that is a fantasy—
face it, nightingales: here in the New World you don’t even exist.

* * *

And yet I hear you calling out from cyberspace,
your song that is constant while we grow old—
Keats said it first, and now a click on your breast
gives anyone ten seconds of your unchanging pennywhistle.

* * *

But the song is a trick: it sounds like the same bird but it is not:
as Bozo the clown was a series of men
so the bird I hear must have already rotted.
And outside, it’s another bird who’s taken up your song.

* * *

By “outside” I mean out in the English woods—
in America, the closest we come are your cousins.
Family Turdidae, the sweet-singing thrushes,
bird for the most practical of griefs.

* * *

In England, you go by Luscinia luscinia:
creatures named for the light, just like me,
light that comes late and now wanes so early:
nightingales you are also good birds for a winter grief.

* * *

Grief that is hoping the solstice will hurry
and the robin returns to chow down on the lawn.
His Latin name (Turdus?) brings me to your feces,
which Japanese women dab on their faces so they’ll look young.

* * *

Label says: “Nightingale Droppings can also brighten your kimono”
but you don’t have kimonos, or robes like the boxers
with your name on the back, your beautiful name,
that is the link between us, like these blue letters to resurrect your song.