Mother Curlew

First published in Sunder, Issue 2: Tangle, Jul 2024

i.m. Zach Robba (1996-2020)

We don’t often get a chance to see our dead.

Still less often do we know them when we see them.

—Kelly Link, ‘The Wrong Grave’

In my dreams,

you are the mother curlew

who hugs the earth,

hissing at me                              

like a death adder. I deserve it

for not accepting your invite

to our school reunion

& missing your funeral.

A plover's scream rips   

me from sleep

& you are the plover too,

bristling at suburbia

barking outside my window

& in a waking dream,

you come back

as the laughless kookaburra

staring me down,

spotlit like a circus act

gone wrong.

On my worst nights,

you are a gull in the mouth

of a shark & my wings

are tangled in molasses

air, powerless to make a sound

above the frenzy so loud

I'll never drown it out.