Suzanne Bronson

Suzanne Bronson Poems

The Best Poem Of Suzanne Bronson

Ten Thousand Sparrows

I We Do Not Tell, We Do Not Gather

I will know the ghosts

you created and you will know mine

by a look,

by your listening

or lack of either –

because we do not stand and state

our names – real or imagined,

but we find each other.

These are the stories we don’t tell

but keep in a compact

in the small fastened compartment

of a make-up bag –

accepting its presence in

the thin silky material, the bulging outline

with zippered teeth

tightly closed.



II The Night of Ten Thousand Sparrows

The last half of my teenage years.

I took a lovers every word like a sweet

seedcake from his mouth.

I took my parents every word like communion –

but it was really a quicksand

dragging me into its ragged hole.

I didn’t know – and

I don’t know why.

In a room full of night

there was a stiff hospital bed and

a check from nurses every half hour.

I was asked to bear down and they would take

out these long, bloody jells.

On a half arm table

with powdery sterile gloves,

the nurses put the clots on plastic trays and

begin to tear apart something

that should have never seen light.

A procedure for them – a casual routine,

their motions meticulous, a silent movie.

They said they had to check to be sure

that the fetus had not passed through.

These jell forms were not red,

they were beyond red somehow.

They were purple, a shade of purple –

thick as flesh and seemed to be the

color of all life itself.

I no longer fought the pain,

the more I struggled, the deeper I seemed to get.

Relaxing, flowing with it

with the prompt nurses procedure –

each examination on little trays in front of me

with powder laden latex gloves.

My body seemed to be half

immersed after the operation.

I hardly slept that night.

Someone pale and granular

stared back at me

from the bathroom mirror.

It started to get light outside –

from black to gray and the birds came

with the morning.

Those little sparrows that seem to be

everywhere. The common ones

that no one ever notices or holds dear.

There were four or five of them on the

window ledge. Then eight, twenty, forty –

a kaleidoscope of light and their tiny sounds.

There were ten thousand sparrows on that ledge.

Each one tiny and precious like my baby

that lay dead inside.

But they were savage

taking everything into their mouths –

twisting the blood, the baby, every gritty delusion,

gathering up like seeds, rolling them in their beaks

and pointed, thin tongues.

They fought and jumped from one place to another

stealing everything that they could.

And then they flew away.



III Deliberate

We eleven,

we were cold as soldiers, professionals

in good standing with good jobs,

knowing the range and price of free will –

straight as ship masts,

straight as pitched white pine.

Rushed from room to room – deliberate,

silent with socked feet.

Convinced ourselves that the termination

was necessary.

No one spoke in unwanted terms,

mentioned reasons, justifications, failures –

there was only a gray pitch that

melted from the sky, hung from the walls,

pooled by our padded feet.

It would settle inside us,

sealing unfinished parts.

The rooms smelled of bodies

well used and machinery,

cold and full of souls –

scents that would lay in the

back of my throat well after,

scents that did not beckon.

There alone that day, I would

have no anesthesia.

I’d watch a yellow daisy taped to

a second hand go the clock round –

three times, three minutes.

The doctor talking me through

each painful stage –

the calm and kind procedure,

the calm and kind professionals.

The sealant, the pitch gave no soundness

to our bodies or to the act

only a translucent gray, like clouds,

like tears of angels.

The seraph, with a handful of fire,

burned its way through me, collected

my child’s soul to return it to heaven.

It was all I had asked for.

There would be times after this,

when I would be afraid of my dreams,

the monsters that lay claim to life –

questioning if I could have been

less determined, less professional.



IV Confession

Their bodies would have been soft

like dough – I would explain that

I see myself squeeze each one

between thumb and fore finger

watch its mouth fall open with perhaps

a small cry and its trusting child eyes

asking me why.

Or I would see them lie

in the bottom of a machine –

a pile of victims,

a twitching holocaust,

bodies of numbers without names

relaxing into death.

I don’t know -

I didn’t want to know.

I went for absolution, saying these

memories got in my way of prayer.

The priest told me

there were three things:

what I remember,

what I think happened, and then

what actually happened.

He gave my penance - there

would come a day when,

confided with, I would

have to tell my own experiences –

how there is guilt,

how it haunts you.

And as I stand here now

with two children in tow

and two under my feet –

while waiting for this cleansing rain,

I wonder, dear reader, if it is you

because I still owe something,

because they never walked this earth,

still, my children can speak.

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