Sweet Songbirds

(a poem)

Sweet songbirds,

I know you through promisingly painful ballads

-The ones I receive in that bittersweet minor key-

Songs that are never triumphant; never in major,

Yet your notes do not lose out on using sharps or flats.

In summer you sow sorrow into sunsets,

Winter only means your woes widen the silence,

Even the spring; you have robbed of life and its offspring,

And autumn just reminds me of how it sounds to fall.

But songbirds, what would you say-

If, after cycles of letting you drain colour

With your crescendos,

After allowing you to compose a soundtrack of the costs and compromises;

Of imperfections and the overwhelming weight on my sternum;

That I have gone deaf through a process of counting hours of laughter and light?

That I have forgotten your tune in the face of a perfect opposite?

Perhaps I have now found the comfort that can help explain your musicality

without the melancholy;

Perhaps, this time, hindsight will be thorough in notation and other

intellectualized intricate technicalities.

It is still painful-believe me;

I feel it will always sting around the edges of consciousness,

But it is bearable now; like coming to terms with repeat symphonies

in merely my background.

It fades out,

Gradually,

As I begin to move on.

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