I stood in the ice storm that killed the wood thrush & sang to it
But what was haunting me wasn’t dead or dying:
At first what you left on earth had no end point
When I walked into your room, they flew out of my hands,
zeros & ohs, ones & eyes on the telephone keys
Icicles, details of tiring winter, thicken my song
dead in my mouth
Not a signal, or a sign, or a symptom
Just your bird, still after you in the dark, finding me instead
Julia Anna Morrison is a poet from Alpharetta, Georgia. She has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 2014, Julia was a Nightboat Books Poetry Prize finalist and a Yaddo Residency Fellow. You can find more of her work in Handsome, LARB Quarterly Journal or at juliaannamorrison.com.