Poem du jour

Diva, Retired
by Terese Coe


She keeps a cockatoo out on the porch
where it can see the jungle. A fragile chain
droops from its claw, runs through the open window
to the study. In the hilss above Chiang Mai,
the undaunted diva settles at her Steinway
to recompose the aria once more.
He said my voice was gone,
but I know I still can hit the money notes.

The captive alien lets go piercing shrieks
that echo through the house all day.
Beverly, she calls it, sometimes Sills.
Every lurid screech works her release from
memories of maddened Salomé.
Hell means going forward, now or then,
and everything is aria in the end.