BIRDLAND JOURNAL

Celebrating Northern California Voices

Ring by Kathryn Jordan

Grandma hid Hershey bars. When she died, her treasures
appeared in coat pockets, powder boxes, tall jars. Now
I’m turning my house inside out, looking for her ring.
Are you sure you didn’t hide it? my husband asks
as outside, masked crowds march for justice.
At first we were told no masks; now we wear them
to take out the trash. Corona head: forgetting walks
with friends, the purpose of passwords scribbled on Post-its.
Think of three places you might have hidden it.
Making one last pass through the rooms, the tableau of glass
creatures attracts. There, among Grandma’s porcelain birds,
her ring, nacreous sea green stone — the one that conjured angels.
I lift the shade, night air rushes in. After weeks of silence,
my own and the world’s, white noise of engine, faint jade
remnant of light in the west. A valve opens, lilt and sound
flood my chest and head, rule of melody transcended.
My teacher’s broadside on the aspen table, her words, roots
exposed on the bank of a creek, join the stream
until the fear of being dammed up goes, until I know
what angels know of being lost, then found.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kathryn Jordan’s poems appear in the New Ohio Review, the Comstock Review, Crosswinds, and Birdland, among others, and are forthcoming in The Sun and Oberon.  Winner of the San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference Prize for Poetry and the Sidney Lanier Poetry Award, her book is “Riding Waves” (Finishing Line Press, 2018.)  She’s a finalist for this year’s Tucson Festival of Books Literary Prize, New Ohio Review Prize for Poetry and Comstock Review’s Jessie Bryce Niles Chapbook Contest. Kathryn loves to hike the East Bay hills, translating bird song to poems whenever possible.

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