The small arrow-shaped bird nestled
among the other pins in my jewelry box,
is smooth, shiny, and red as the hard candy
apples sold at the local cider mill
that my mother never let me eat,
I could break my teeth or worse grow
fat, and my glamorous mother would
never have that. My fashion
plate mother who made me
this tiny bird one summer in the Catskills
when we lived in a cabin and swam
in a lake and all the moms took morning
art classes where they painted pins,
an orange leaf, a yellow swan, a red bird,
this red bird, its ruby lacquer sleek
as the cherry patent leather three-inch heels
my stylish mother slipped on
her size six high-arched ballerina feet
or the glossy scarlet polish she wore on her fingers
and toes every day of her life even
at the very end when she lay in a hospital bed
in a hospice, all twenty nails growing
brighter and brighter as she shrunk
further and further into herself,
the skin on her hands and feet mottled,
puffy, and blue as the jeweled eye
of the tiny stoplight-colored bird
now perched on my palm and staring
at nothing the way my dying mother,
whose name Faigl means Little Bird, curled
on her side and stared at nothing, not me,
not my broken father slumped
in his seat, sniffling and sobbing,
not the tree outside her open window
where a robin puffed out her red breast
and sang her heart out, the nurse stepping
silently as only nurses can into the room to listen,
her hand landing softly on my shoulder
her voice, a whisper gentle as the wind
reminding me that hearing is the last to go
