Clade Song 12

There Once Was Something More

There once was something more stirring
than spotting a flicker or a kingbird
in the cemetery
but I barely remember what it was,
how it was done--

it also had to do with looking intently
and it also had to do with caution
in the approach--
but unlike the quest for birds
it contained

a hope for touch and long talks,
a fluttering in the chest,
a varying
confidence in who I was or who I could
become, or with whom.

But I do remember. Images
remind me, steal my mind from work
to a sad
distracted absence, with its own kind
of empty joy.

Steve Nickman's poetry collection, To Sleep with Bears is now available from Wordtech (2022). He is a psychiatrist who works mainly with kids, teenagers and young adults. He has a strong interest in the experiences and dilemmas of adoptees and their families, and is working on a book about therapy, The Wound and the Spark. Steve's poetry has recently appeared in Pleiades, Nimrod, Summerset Review, Tar River Review, Tule Review, and JuxtaProse. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts and is a member of Poemworks: The Workshop for Publishing Poets.