Magpie with flies crawling on your eyes,
motionless on the curb near where my daughter
plays, your uncharacteristic silence and stillness
captures her attention, her endless energy
stalled. Sadly, you are not her first brush
against death—a year past the family dog
going ahead without us, reduced to stones
resting in a glass sepulchre. It isn’t much,
but I break a branch, move you beneath a bush,
bury you with a blanket of leaves. No more
hopping through the weeds, no more
morning caws at commuters passing below,
the speed is drained from your sleek blue feathers,
the immaculateness of white remains. We all
deserve privacy in decay. There comes
a time when there’s no more help to give,
or there was nothing to be done at all.
And what are we, then, I want to say,
if not the ones left to provide
dignity for the dead? But there is no time;
my daughter is off already, calling for me
to follow, unburdened in the way only children
can achieve, or perhaps simply satisfied
we have already done all we can.
Michael Kellichner is a poet and writer originally from Pennsylvania, but has been calling South Korea his home for quite a while. Previous poems of his have appeared in various online journals, including Loud Coffee Press, the Tahoma Literary Review, and The Tishman Review, among others.