I used to be jealous of the rising tide, for it could never leave
Just lap at jagged teeth and spray its foam upon your sleeve
My blindness felt the seagulls flee, their mocking heard no more
Yet still the tide, it rose in time, to crash on rocky shores
I know why the kestrel races, on the hunt for freckled faces
In the beaches, ports, and harbors, raving for its saving graces
In the alleyways, for forty days, I heard them caw
In the burning trees, I heard their pleas, their throats so raw
I swore the birds, they never rest, for land and earthly law
Don’t much apply in cyan sky and clench of vulture’s jaw

Foaming at the mouth, the sparrows south the Mason-Dixon
Follow them for three or more in search of fours and vixens
How their eerie cries pervade the night when I can’t listen?
They heard too much, I drowned the sound in roar of straining pistons
I know why the eagle cries, it’s far too scared to laugh
For if it does, the sky above might write its epitaph

I used to be jealous of Hestia, I built a hearth behind my eyes
But all the heat had brought was frozen birds and fireflies
They lit up all my violence, in the land of violet skies
The robins watched in silence as I severed all my ties
And when I fell, from panicked highs to world I barely know
The pigeons came and cushioned me from ground so far below
They didn’t blame my lack of sane or stains all on my soul
Just took to flight, I swore I might, and leave this sickly cold
Now I know why the falcon screams, it never had a home
It wandered round the Union with no place to call its own
It took a dive to Dixie and who knows when it returns
I pray the birds don’t leave, for all I am is flight and words

– Izzy Fishbach

Author’s Note: “Hestia” was written in a period of transition, before a move from NY to the South. The poem exists as a rope strung between two divergent forces – one the one hand, the call of home and belonging; on the other, the freedom to find oneself anew. The titular line of this poem, about the greek goddess of the hearth, was indirectly inspired by a Kendrick Lamar lyric.