Eileen Walsh Duncan

Sides of the Window 

She took something with her from the death scene.
Each day at that hour, it’s as if someone pulls down the shades,
and she thins, becomes a sliver. The grandfather clock leans
into light gone gritty. The coffee table dips more along
the edges, its grim stains glower.

Outside the birds arrive again to look for seeds
with husks that are dry, split, or shattered open
to the meaty nub. They inch their way on feet
made of meager bone and skin that ridges and pocks.
One tendon apiece had locked these feet to their perch all night.

Their heads twitch, holding one eye at a time
toward the ground, the ground they covered yesterday.
Perhaps something has fallen.

Eileen Walsh Duncan’s work recently appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Swannanoa Review, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Pleasure Boat Studio’s zine Lights, Ramblr Online, the anthology Rewilding: Poems for the Environment, and the city of Shoreline’s Voices in the Forest installation. She received Seattle Review’s Bentley Award and has been a Pushcart Prize nominee.