That on a day like any other
I walked hand in hand with my mother
away from the rose garden where my father
stood with his hunting rifle pointed towards
the sky; a place of promises, paradise and stars
or unseen angels who watched over the meek
and the wicked and sometimes intervened
if wishes were granted, if enough Hail Marys
were said and if some saintly soul
long dead was watching out for you.

That on that day like any other I heard
my father break my mother’s heart
with his threats of violence to himself
and anyone in close range, where I’d been
mesmerized by two robins who fed their young
as they flew back and forth from their nest
of twigs maybe a hundred times between them,
when my mother pulled me along the cobblestone
path into a grove of trees; our makeshift shelter
where bullets might weave in and out
of leaves and never find the mark or even
that mama bird whose beak was full of berries.

That on a day like any other, I walked hand
in hand with my mother, faster and faster
until we were long past the garden
far beyond the reach of my father
and his gun, when we heard a shot
then another, and I thought about those
baby birds waiting for their mother and how
in the middle of mayhem, they were unaware,
their necks outspread into the heavens,
mouths wide open, without a care.

– Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas 

Note: from the manuscript In the Making of Goodbyes (Clare Songbird Publishing House)