Psalm at Sixty 

When I hate this body
I remind myself

of the abandoned nest
of mud and straw

way up in the lilac bush.
Of every bird,

all throat and call
refusing to be silenced,

and what was never
mine to keep.

First appeared in The Stirring.

Cindy Veach is the author of Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press). Her poetry has appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Journal, North American Review, Salamander and elsewhere. She co-edits the Mom Egg Review quarterly online VOX folio and lives in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts.

On why poetry matters: Poetry matters because it speaks to what it means to be human and expresses the inexpressible.