Blue Jays Calling

V1.

Your favourites always seemed to be falling apart/The smell of wood and dust/Antiques and a book of birds/With loose pages.

You had stories, and names for the pairs/Talked your favourites into mine/The smell of wood, the sight of birds/But I must have gentle fingers.

I only looked at the same five pages anyways/The mallards, the chickadees, dangling/Cardinals, the red-wings and/Of course the blue jays.

Mimic the call of the chickadees in fall/Smile at the swelling throats of red-wings/But bluejays do not frequent here./A reminder my home is twice removed.

Know the gravity that replaced my heart and/Pulled me here, hear where the jays do not call/Know that encouragement lies in coloured wings and/My favourites are held together by the/Tones of wood and different centuries.

V2.

Your favourites are coloured creation/Blue incarnate, a plate of summer vegetables/The shade of a certain someone's lips and/Clarity in the form of an arched promise.

You brought light and the atmosphere/Into my childhood bedroom and taught me/How to breathe, how gratitude/Grows the smallest seed.

I learned how to look from you, to/The world alive and vivid/We were created with five senses but/I think you slipped me a sixth.

Made me an amplifier, a truth finder/Learned that words work like breadcrumbs/Coaxing, path making, but blue jays prefer peanuts./I'm working on the colour of an arched bridge.

See the difference of definition/Love and promises are not actions withheld/See my life in light and colour/My favourites colliding in/Eating an orange in winter at 4pm.

V3.

Your favourites are ironic/A clock with just the second hand./You gravitate towards structures and right angles/Like you know what it means to stay still.

Creative energy abundant, you/Made space for a newcomer/Showed me the different ways in which to make a fire/Hearths around which we would build our homes.

Your fire became places, and mine/Mine desired worlds./But I saw you drawing parallel lines,/Saying they would meet at the end.

Blue jays do not roost in city rafters./I suppose I could make a world in which they do/But I need that energy - those people, those places/I need it all, to show you where I am.

Hear me call you/Do you notice the distance?/Hear the echo of flint being struck/My favourites are the beginnings/In the energy you taught me to harness.

V4.

Your favourites require breathing room/A house that sighs as you cross the threshold./Fields that stand between you and the neighbours,/Like the camera placed between you and me.

Speech was always optional between us/But I liked hearing you say it out loud anyway./You offered me silence as though a feast/I'm told it's an acquired taste.

I think of appreciation when I think of you,/Of vastness, to observe or perhaps to fill./You learned 'value' a bit quicker than the rest of us/I wonder, if we give it the same weight.

You are most like blue jays calling/Of homebound, of family favourites/Bookbinder of our lineage/Do you imagine your hands softest?

Think of me truly, I am loud/But do you hear me?/Think of perspective uniquely yours/My favourites blend ease and noise,/The satisfaction of teal and orange.

V5.

I wonder if you know my favourites/See the colours that make me happiest,/Hear the way in which I move in the world./When do you think of me most?

Do the blue jays come to mind?/You see, I still look for hope on their wings,/Interpret their presence as a sign/Home is coming, take comfort.

I have my small moments, my uneven stitches/Memories sweetened by nostalgia divine and,/I have a well-worn, five page guide/'How to Build a Home'.

I like to think myself a jack of all trades but/I know what I offered you was love./It was warmth, and a tempest./It was not always gentle.

Connection in small happiness,/An action born of time itself,/Connecting the senses./My favourites are the very moments in which I loved,/Whether first, last, or an infinite once more.