firebirds

“Once you get to the ninth kingdom, there is no going back. It is the kingdom of negation, of the frozen will. It has many names.” ― Sylvia Plath, Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom: A Story

More on this poem later, but for now I’d just like to mention that the prompts at its core are from sonja ringo’s daily poetry prompts for April 2026. Namely, “effervescent”, “swan song”, and “moth dust”, and, as usual, in a very abstract way. The poem doesn’t name these themes specifically, but my understanding of their symbolism is woven throughout.

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firebirds

Firebirds, slashing the dark underbelly of the sky
swift as a rainfall of arrows; their whooshing is
smooth — and that feels right, the way that cotton
candy melts into your mouth before you can mourn it

Perseids bleed out of the open wound, and cover
the Earth with their blinding light, their terrible
promise of greatness, reminding the stones
that they shall never learn how to fly

.

In the fog there is a figure, still, but no less alive
than the dogroses and honeylocust on your porch:
it's something you know, like a in a dream,
not with facts but with the whirring of the heart —

the heart frantically twisting itself into a puppet show,
the heart becoming sunset, becoming shadow monster,
the heart trying to scare away what it cannot understand
at a glance

.

Amidst the fiction, one fact still stands — that all
stardust is history: light as the myth of creation.
The figure seems smaller now, more vulnerable,
made of the same set of ribs wishing to be knighted

The firebird croaks from its bone cage; there is no time
for music during sunsets. Do you remember
how the red eye of the sun was once blinking away
behind the darkening ocean? It's happening again,

every other tomorrow ends in the same flame.

.

You walk out of the fog, toward what seems to be
the faraway glimmer calling the lighthousekeeper home.
In the storm you learn of light as the legend of destruction,
the shape of life seemingly shattering against the mist.

.

The sky is not on fire — its wounds, nothing more than
the residue of wild, cosmic herds raising road dust
in their unstoppable soar across the world's tired face.
Here and now, is a very strange place for a house,

it's unimaginable, even for the silhouette you've yet
to meet, that this may be land fit to build a home on.
Yet, from the dense fog rises the smoke of a hearth,
and the idea of 2 windows faintly flickers in the distance

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I usually begin these posts with an introduction that frames the poem — some explanation of what it is about or where it is meant to lead. This time, however, I did not want to dictate a direction in which this poem should go. Perhaps it is just some surreal meditation on falling stars, memory, and the fragile instinct to build a home in a universe that constantly reminds us how temporary we are. Perhaps it is nothing more than a small current of air moving between cosmic violence and quiet domestic hope, about the strange human impulse to claim belonging in a place that may never have been meant for us. It could be about the fact that when confronted with something vast or incomprehensible — whether the night sky or our own fears — the mind begins to produce stories. It could be about the strange human habit of trying to build meaning, about fear, about rebirth, about migration. Perhaps it is about something much simpler: a single firebird crossing the sky.

Nevertheless, I would like to keep it open, surreal, and ask you: what was this about for you?

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