Skip to Content

Spring Mix, for Ahmaud

By Opal Moore

1.
A small bird built a secret nest
beneath my balcony. There must be
hatchlings there, out of view. 
She flies back and forth, small prey
in her beak.

Some kind of wren, I think.
Small, brown and quick.  No time for
singing midday. Duty
is her instinct.

She flits. Frets. Undeterred.
She knows the world as it is.  No
conspiracy, no theory.  Life, for her,
is life.  Open throats and beak. Trust,
her leaving marked by each return.

2.
My neighborhood is gentrifying.
The whites are here, folks say.
We will get sidewalks now. And 4-way
stop signs at the corner where that grandma
and her grandbabies were killed that time.
They walk their dogs. Push baby carriages.
Post paranoia on Ring.

I have a Ring doorbell. We watch and
don’t subscribe. A gimmick
my husband says, a veteran. Air Force.
(Not to be confused with Space Force.)
We watch dogs on leashes shit on our lawn.
We watch for property tax hikes.
I watch a Jaybird harass
a black and brown cat, her
message:  do not tarry here.

3.
From my window I watch a carpenter bee
drill a new hole in my front post. NPR
drones on in the background—they do
ads now like news. Across the street a boy plays alone
in his driveway.  The virus dictates his solitary game.
Another boy sits in the family car.  Doors flung open.
He wears earphones, private dances to House.

My nephew’s here today.  We
entertain him on the deck.  He can’t come in,
took a plane from Orlando. Arrives
bearing flowers—spring mix
in a cut glass vase, and a white orchid.
We remember not to hug. 

4. 
Mother wren is not alone.  She has a mate.
To my eye they are indistinguishable male, female.
They flit to and from the nest, tireless
they tend fledgling life. I wonder if they
think that this is hard.  I wonder if they mourn
the one among too many mouths
to feed, the one outbid by its siblings, the one
who will fall from the nest, not fly.

I think my springtime thoughts.  The wrens
see the world as it is.  As it must be—a conspiracy
of need.  My husband jokes he will
charge them rent.  The gift orchid trembles
white in a breeze unthreatening
as the lithe brown boy jogging
past this house, his daily run
unmolested.

 

 

 

Listen as Opal Moore reads Spring Mix, for Ahmaud.
Added: Thursday, May 2, 2024  /  Used with permission. “Spring Mix” from Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic, edited by Valerie Boyd (Lookout Books, 2022). Copyright ©2022 by Opal Moore. Reprinted here with the permission of Lookout Books, University of North Carolina Wilmington.
Opal Moore

Opal Moore is a native Chicagoan living and writing in Atlanta. She is the author of the poetry collection Lot’s Daughters. Her poems and stories appear in print and online, including Honey, Hush! An Anthology of African American Women’s Humor, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic (Lookout Books, 2022), Boston Review, Notre Dame Review, Callaloo and other spaces. Opal is a Cave Canem Fellow and an original member of the Wintergreen Women Writers Collective.

Image Description: Opal Moore is an African American woman. Her dark brown locks fall to her shoulders. She has a scarf tie-dyed in purple, green, aquamarine blue and yellow loosely draped on her shoulders. At her throat is a silver necklace with a Tuareg pendant. In the background are leaves from the fig tree on her sun porch.

Other poems by this author

Back to top