Weekly Poem: 'Fiat Lux'

**By Traci Brimhall** My sister asks what ate the bird's eyes     as she cradles the dead chickadee she found         on the porch. Ants, I say, knowing the soft ocular cells are the easiest way into the red feast of heart,     liver, kidney. I tell her that when they ate the bird         they saw the blue bowled sky, the patchwork of soybean fields and sunflowers, a bear loping     across a gravel road. Already, they are bringing         back to their tunnels the slow chapters of spring-- a slough drying to become a meadow and the bruised     smell of sex inside flowers. They start to itch         for a mate's black-feathered cheeks and music. As she cushions the eggs, their queen dreams     of young chickadees stretching their necks and crying         for their mother to protect them until they learn to see. Sister, it is like this--the visions begin to waver,     and the colony goes mad, fearful they'll never see         another dahlia tell its purple rumor, or see a river commit itself to the ocean. As the last memory leaves them,     they twitch in their sleep, trying to make out the distant         boatman lifting his lantern, his face disfigured by light.   "Traci Brimhall":http://www.tracibrimhall.com/ is the author of "Our Lady of the Ruins" (forthcoming from W.W. Norton), winner of the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and "Rookery" (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. She teaches creative writing at Western Michigan University, where she is a doctoral candidate. She also serves as poetry editor for "Third Coast":http://www.thirdcoastmagazine.com/ and editor at large for "Loaded Bicycle":http://www.loadedbicycle.com/.