The circles spiral.
Goodbye is not a definitive swan song.
Time cannot be buried in a single spot.

Early evening
and the sun no longer sets in this kitchen
that watches the seasons turn without comment.
The sills have new shadows we have not yet named.

This morning broke over fallen feathers
and for a second I caught the silence your song once filled
You lay where the grass had barely grown green,
below a tree where we’d placed a bird box
in a garden where a bunny used to come to play at night.

When the sun
shone the brightest
I took your dignity and covered it with a gentle blanket of earth
and placed the bud of a rose by the breast of your stilled chest
in the hope that circles do spiral,
that a root can find a home on a wing that once found flight.

Sometimes faith needs to be released before it can be returned.

Later, after naming those shadows before the sun set
and another spiral closed and then commenced afresh,
I watered that spot in the freshly turned earth
as another bird found its place to perch
on that bird box where you once sang your song.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly