This Present Life

James Reiss

Did the bird that slammed into my picture window

think its glass was an open door he could breeze

through like the sparrow flying through time

in the Anglo-Saxon poem, coming to life when he flew

into a manor hall dining room? Did he expect baked eels and mead

to be served amid cries of hál béo þu with music

from hand-held harps? Did he think he could flit past my fireplace

in his gray feathers and never emerge from my house?

As he lay in a tiny heap outside on a flagstone

his soul arose like smoke that wreathed

my suburb's shield.