REVEAL by Louis Raymond-Kolker, text by Charmaine Cadeau Ward.

REVEAL by Louis Raymond-Kolker and text by Charmaine Cadeau Ward, performed by the High Point University Chamber Singers at First Presbyterian Church of La Grange, IL on May 9, 2024.
Text is:
Birds spun of the most transparent
sugar-glass flit between us wherever
we go, the warble from their throats
sounding like a verse of couldn’ts.
Couldn’t help it.
When you take
hold of one, its heart flashes
apricot and pops like the filament
in a hot light bulb.
All that’s left is rattle.
The sky, the room: shut.
Stone-still.
But then remember
moving in that winter,
those months not knowing what would come
up in the garden, coat those unstrained branches.
All we could do was wait for the buds, the
leaving.
It could’ve turned out so differently.