Dear Charles Bukowski,
This morning when my student wanted to share a poem,
I was disappointed when she said the poem was yours.
I didn’t want to hear about whiskey and whores.
And there they were in stanza two,
but also, singing its way through the whole poem
was the bluebird that lives in your heart,
and Charles, I wish you could have heard it,
the living epiphany in her voice as she read the poem to me,
because she, too, has a beautiful animal trapped inside her.
She, too, realizes she can be too clever or too tough
to set that beautiful animal free.
And I fell in love, Charles, with her courage, yes,
but also with the honesty in your words
that winged through any cage
I might have put around my own heart.
In fact, I was shocked to realize I had a cage in place
with bars so stubborn they almost
kept your bluebird from flying in.
This began as a thank you letter, Charles,
but it’s also, I see, an apology.
To you, of course, and also to myself,
and most especially to that little bluebird
I tried to keep out. Look, now there’s a little
cup-shaped nest in my heart where that cage once was,
a nest woven of humility and genuine gratefulness.
And your bluebird now lives in me, too. I know you
wouldn’t cry over a bird living in the heart.
But Charles, you remind me, I do.

Love,
Rosemerry


to read “Bluebird” by Charles Bukowski, visit here.