Matilda died today

[Leanne]

That it is a touching, poignant and personal poem does not excuse it from critique -- in fact, the more personal, the more perfect I'm sure you want it to be.  Now that I have some distance from the strength of your emotion, here are my thoughts.  

After all, this is where we critique the poem, not coddle the author, especially when we have no way of knowing what is true and what is complete fabrication.

 
 
 
She flew squawking from the kitchen
to land on my shoulder. She brought me
the tiny burden of her death.
I caught her up, hugged her to me
as if I could hold it off;
I breathed into her lungs,
pumped her wings, I couldn’t see - -- I am not convinced that you need both "I couldn't see" and "my tears blinded me" -- sonically it's good but there's a redundancy that weakens the idea
my tears blinded me -
but she wouldn’t come back. I held
her limp body, neck swinging loose
as if broken, feathers disarrayed
as she would never have them, eyes
shuttered, then closed. -- all the -ed endings are quite poignant here.  It's blatantly past tense and done with.  
Slowly she got cold. -- not keen on "got"
 
This morning when she’d hopped
onto my hand, I’d noticed
her feet were cool. Usually
she’s warm. -- tense issue?
 
Now she’s buried, wrapped
in a pink silk chemise of mine,
under the pohutukawa near the tui’s nest
and a blackbird is singing
her tangihanga. -- all the senses addressed in this strophe -- lovely!
 
I’m putting away her things. I need
to list them before she’s gone altogether. -- the choice of just two lines here is excellent -- it's an imperative, short and direct
 
First, I put her seed dish outside
for the sparrows and finches, blackbirds
who’ll miss her daily leftovers. I’ll fill it
every day until the bags of seed
run out.  -- and still she continues to give (though I foresee Hitchcock-like problems later on when the birds realise there's no more food!)
 
Her water bowl will rejoin -- rejoin?  Is that where it came from?  If so, I like how organic this whole relationship is/was
odd garden stuff. She’d floated
one of her toys - the bowl
of an old wooden spoon -
in it this morning.
I don’t know why.  -- secret galah business
 
Her swing
with a concrete perch to help
trim her claws, her mirror with dangling bell
that never chimed, just clunked,
the boiled lamb bone for her beak,
the cuttlefish, the shell grit - all into the garbage
with the half-explored apricot, the sampled -- I feel like there should be hyphens here: sampled-but-not-finished
but not finished apple, the eggplant end,
the cabbage bone, lettuce leaf, and the chewed -- not sure why the "and" is here
and splintered wooden spoon handle, the honey
dripper with its grooves neatly rounded.
Her spirit is still imprinted in them -- in or on?
but it’s fading. A fly
just landed on the cage bottom.
 
Now I bend and fold the sprig of leaves
from the big gum on the corner by Ian’s house
near the railway lines - it still has a few
gum nuts on it, not yet chewed.
She smelled of eucalyptus when I breathed her in
just before I put her in the ground
and covered her
just an hour ago, just this morning. -- circling back as the brain does -- scents leave the greatest imprint, of course
 
Her ladder - she was scared of it at first
but climbing the cage walls hurt her feet
and the ladder made it easier. I put it
where she’s buried, leading up into the sky.  -- I am not convinced that you need "leading up into the sky" -- it's heading into cheesy territory (or Led Zeppelin...)
 
I throw away her other mirror, that I’d taken
from my mother’s nursing home - a folding
double vanity mirror I’d hooked to the cage
with a key ring from Las Vegas.  -- that you discard the link to your mother is telling
 
Matilda died this morning. Already in the past.
 
Last things - that flower John brought her
from Porirua, whose name I still don’t know.
It grew at his place. Tuis and kakas loved it too,
he shared it with Matilda for months; -- the punctuation here is problematic
it had just finished flowering, these were
the last stems.
 
A wilted fag-end of a carrot. The newspaper
dated December 4. A dried-up locquat
and a few feathers. She’d finished her molt
just in time to die
 
and the pink-and-grey rose-covered comforter -- this strophe is perfect.
I’d bought new when Mum was still alive
that had covered her cage every night
that I lifted every morning
to let the world back in.
 
I won’t need that again.
 




(thank you A D Hope for '...the tiny burden of her death' from Death of the Bird)