Gene Hyde
Gene Hyde’s poetry, essays, and photography have appeared in such publications as Appalachian Journal, San Antonio Review, The Banyan Review, Jerry Jazz Musician, Raven’s Perch, Valley Voices, Tiny Seed Literary Journal and Mountains Piled Upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Anthropocene. He lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina with his partner and a scruffy little dog.
Watching a Titmouse Part the Red Sea in the Birdbath
Swallowtails rustle in the forsythia,
a tufted titmouse frolics in the
birdbath, his antics parting
the waves like Moses in a
Cecil B. DeMille epic. Seems like
DeMille’s Red Sea was just
a wall of Jello, and I thought
about this each time I had
congealed salad at some family
function, uncles babbling about
minorities while aunts swapped
recipes. I parted the congealed
salad like Moses did, bits of
fruit cocktail suspended in
Jello like pharaoh’s troops who
picked the wrong guy to follow.
The porch at my uncle’s house
wasn’t welcoming – hard wicker
chairs in the harsh Carolina sun,
fading in relevance as I grew
older and figured out what all
his Jesse Helms stickers meant.
I’d go to the porch to escape
the banter, the love entangled
with judgement, especially toward
the nephew with the bushy beard
and long hair, who wasn’t scoring
any points in that regard, mind you.
The titmouse, sufficiently scrubbed,
flies off as I sit on my porch,
my dog napping in a comfortable
wicker chair while the trees slowly
recover from the storm, saplings
surviving in their own way, seeing
the hole in the canopy they are
eager to fill, or will one day, when
I’m gone and my nephew sits
here, watching the swallowtails,
hearing the wrens and robins,
maybe witnessing a titmouse
part the Red Sea in the birdbath.
