Emily Ransdell, One Finch Singing

From Emily Ransdell’s new book of the same name, “One Finch Singing”

From the poet’s website:

One Finch Singing

Some days I want to fill my pockets
with everything I’m afraid of losing.
How much milkweed to save
the monarch? How many foil blankets
to keep an ancient redwood alive?

I worry about finches. Smaller
than a fist, wingspan no bigger
than an open hand. I keep thinking
of what it took for them to get here, flying
all those miles up to Oregon. I keep thinking
of heat. Cities hitting triple digits. London
for god sake. Italy on fire.

There’s smoke again in Ashland,
like the time Kay and I went for a getaway.
All we had were bandanas, useless
against that stench and ash. We walked
the streets like grandmotherly bandits,
drank gin with the Airbnb windows shut.
By then I knew she was terminal.
Still, it felt impossible she could die.

I worry about beetle kill and rivers
missing their fish, the dry tinder of California
as creeks in Kentucky rage.
I read that finches can live on thistles, as if
to say, There’s hope. The ancients thought
finches carried souls to the afterlife, and the sound
of one finch singing meant an end to grief.

Last week a brush fire ignited within sight
of my porch — just like that — flames leapt
from slash and grass to standing firs.
Two thousand acres burned.
Where did the birds go then?

I miss my friend.
I want to know those finches are somewhere.
Safe and singing. From meadow rush
and ditch shrubs, calling
to their kind.