Feathers

Cleaning my desk today: the two blue jay feathers inside an envelope
I had taken to Germany for my mother before she died—
She didn’t remember the jays, which had come to her feeder
in this country. Didn’t remember their flash of unearthly blue.
Feathers? She had forgotten what they were for.
What are they for? Like the soul after death, detached from the body
that was their home, they’re nothing almost,
so light I barely knew their weight,
flying with me all the way to that hushed bed, and back.