Gyroscope Review is celebrating National Poetry Month with a Poem Renaissance, a review of previously published poems looking for new life and new views. Every day through May 20th, a new poem to fall in love with all over again.
Every Bird
by Sharon Pretti
Half-past three and I wake from a dream
of my mother driving away, teacups strung
from the rearview, her transparent hands
able to steer through red-leaf fields, endive,
and berry. Always a highway cutting inland,
the cliffs at our backs rendered small,
a scape easily released. I don’t want to confuse
distance with a grief that’s not yet here,
the shoreline in flux, diminished in places.
I’ll be in every bird, she tells me. A bevy, a siege,
a chime, a flock, as if I’m accustomed
to looking up, versed in the shapes she’ll take.
I tried returning. Light adrift on water,
traveling in pieces. I tried wading in
without being asked, my body disturbing
the surface of things, the lines in my palms
not meeting. If the cold hurt, I let it
pass through me. I wanted to be that porous.
Originally published in Poetry Quarterly, Summer 2021
Sharon Pretti lives in San Francisco, California. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Calyx, The MacGuffin, Spillway, The Bellevue Literary Review, and Canary. She has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations and was selected for the Best New Poets 2024 anthology. Sharon is a retired medical social worker and, for many years, she had the pleasure of teaching poetry workshops in a nursing home and at assisted living facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her website is sharonpretti.com
Don’t forget to read the Spring 2025 Issue, available now, online and in print
Previous Renaissance Poets
April Poets