White Starlings (Love Poem) Poem by Doren Robbins

You're the one who saw us as two white starlings
in that weaving with two white birds in it
we brought back from Crete and hung
behind our bed. In your myth of white starlings
I walk around to your solid white back
and stretch over your thrashing tail feathers
to kiss your beak from behind you,
kiss the scarlet beak
of your white starling.

In my myth I saw the two of us
as a button and a half. Sometimes
I was the button, sometimes the half.
A couple times you were the half.
Once in a while both buttons
were whole, but unmatched.
I spent more time than you
as the half. You said I even
looked like the half.

Hell with all that. I ride
a white starling down to the shore,
I live in your myth in a house between
sea rocks buffed by the grind
of white surf. Raised on a hem
of the sand, clasped from behind
by my wing― a white starling rides you.

Your myth is better.