She feeds the birds with bread and margarine, small morsels for shy robins placed on the backs of benches. At each of fourteen feeding sites she stops; a Way of Grief to seek atonement. Each uneaten scrap is mourned. Aged 6, a hungry child had seen her grandma fall and beg for food on fertile soil. The harvest gone; holodomor. Aged 12, a frightened girl had heard her brothers' cries, in winter woods, shots muffled by the bloodied snow. Aged 17, she'd fled her home, a land enriched by blood and bone where nothing grew - possessed stripped bare and then abandoned. Beneath bare winter shrubs she scans for evidence of life; a supplicant with outstretched arms and pishing calls. One brash young bird, emboldened by the need to eat alights her upturned palm to feed. Shriven by a passerine. Bath, 2008
Poetry by Sylvia Fairclough 