Ghost Bird

By Charlie Brice

Snow blankets Pittsburgh today, a blanket
no one would pull over their shoulders 
on a frosty morning like this one.

The best part of a snowy day, like today,
is the meander of hot tea as it makes its way
down a throat and the crunch of toast sheathed 

in a marmalade greatcoat that makes 
the world feel warmer while sticky 
flakes carpet the yard.

A storm of hope raises its weary head
through the paper-crinkle of a Times 
story about the Australian night parrot,
what Aborigine elders called ghost birds,

thought to be extinct for years, but found 
this year, rediscovered, freeing redemption 
from its prison within religious tomes,
releasing it into the world of sensibility.

Clifford Sunfly, an indigenous ranger
in Western Australia, the only person 
from his native community to graduate

high school, took the first photo
of the night parrot since it was thought
to have left our world forever.

This truly is a blanket of good news, a comforter 
of trust in the future that we can all pull over 
our shoulders on a lonely, cold, morning
in our frost-covered world.

Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His chapbook, All the Songs Sung (Angel Flight Press), and his fourth poetry collection, The Broad Grin of Eternity (WordTech Editions) arrived in 2021. His poetry has been nominated twice for the Best of Net Anthology and three times for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Chiron Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, The Paterson Literary Review, Impspired Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, and elsewhere.