We left home, traveling to nowhere.
We walked and walked
and finally stopped. A dead baby bird
lay in the middle of the path.
We stopped, and knelt,
and looked at it. And she cried,
tears running down her cheeks
and on to the little dead bird.
Tears, I said, are your soul.
And she shook her head and touched,
once again, the bird.
We buried it, off the path,
using only our hands to dig a grave.
We laid the bird in the grave
and she cried again. We turned to go
and I thought to myself, maybe
they were only tears, only water, after all.
As if she had heard me (maybe she had), she nodded.
And in the sky, we saw a bird flying
higher than any bird can fly.