Do you think when the red cardinal
attacks the mirroring window
it could be because of some great loss?
They say he thinks he is attacking another male
to keep control of his lady.
But what if he beats his head that way
in the agony of great loss? What is
he lost his mother, and his wife,
and what if his daughters
all turned away?
What if it was you?
Would you not also bang your head on glass?
Again and again to make the pain
in your heart go away?
Wouldn’t you attack the image of yourself,
wondering why you even live?
And if you didn’t, who would you be?
I ask because I had such loss.
First my mother. Then my love.
Then my daughters turned away
in their despair, and I was left alone.
So yes! I bent my wings back,
attacked that cold glass image.
I banged my head on that picture of myself
wanting the pain to go away.
But it never went away.
It still does not go away.
My tears nourish the ground.
And like that cardinal, I will hit,
over and over again until, exhausted and sad,
I make one last turn on this earth
and return, like the cardinal, to the source of all being.
Anthony Signorelli