Eric Huff

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The Goldfinch

take that pair of scissors you have in your right hand and cut the day into strings of paper dolls. later
we’ll go out and collect all those migratory birds that just about made it back but didn’t quite make it
back. how many do you suspect you will be able to hold keeping in mind the weight it will rope
about your heart is something you won’t be able to ever rid yourself from? when we walk down the
trail into the denseness of foliage and the heavy air that always follows the thunderstorms of late
May, how will we know that we’ve reached the spot? and how will we ever find ourselves here again?
this is not birdsong I’m hearing. this is the patient monitor on the third floor ICU room at Aultman Hospital and you are still alive. from the window I see a goldfinch.

Eric Huff (he/him) is a public-school teacher living in the west metro area of the Twin Cities. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as 1913: A Journal of Forms, The Muleskinner Journal, Luna Luna, Saragun Springs, S W I F T S, Molecule, and Action, Spectacle, among others.