After the Accident

1.

The wires are beaded
with starlings, their
scissoring hushes all
else. Through the only

window I can see
a woman in an ice blue
houndstooth suit, gloved,
walking soundlessly

to the other hospital doors.
Someone else's mother.
My own stands close

and touches me where
my hand used to be—

oh, what will I do
with my shoes—they call
after me at night:
laceless, unsatisfied.

2.

How can those little
juncos hope
to settle in our
clever forsythia,

which is only
yellow and yellow?
The bush darkens
like a heavy cup

of their black bodies.
They hold their
heads aslant

to look in my
window: one of
us is weightless,
they say.

Copyright © 2005 Molly Brodak All rights reserved
from New Orleans Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission