Yellow Bird

by Alison Hicks

I want to believe in a world beneath this one.

The bird that flies across the lawn

is a messenger, that if I follow her

in my mind, I will come to a door

she will let me through to the underside of the world.

I will look at my life from below,

my husband and son walking,

the bottom of their shoes.

Other times I think there is no door, nothing below.

The bird flying bent on her own purposes,

her color the outcome of natural selection.

Nothing mystical, just the world working itself out.

Hummingbirds are squeaking, dive-bombing the feeder.

I, too, sitting right-side up in this world.

The bird keeps coming back.

The bird speaking through me.