Didi Jackson

NEST

This sheltering, this half-light,
this corrosive wind, that blackness
that ignites this agony, all of the questions,
this worry now, incessant, this piece of the nest
unraveled, then the next, this filament
of thistle, this floss of milkweed, this bottom
not holding, this bottom falling, that gaping
hole, that oculus of night,
that cry, that animal wail,
this I can’t un-hear, this I don’t want
to remember, that amount of blood,
that one decision, this one life,
those glorious days, these thickly nested
walls, this never ending, this ended, this one
life, that one terrible decision, that winged voice,
that lonely leaving, that all alone,
this knowledge of his empty, this knowing
of his ruin, this broken, that nothing holds,
this nothing, this empty, that he could not be found,
that I could not find him, that I did find him,
that drive, that light, that diminishing.

DIDI JACKSON is the author of Moon Jar (Red Hen Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, New England Review, The New Yorker, and Ploughshares. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and serves as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Vanderbilt University.