As if I needed to remember something,
I find a dead bird on the patio steps. Fledgling,
breast gouged open either by feral cat or raccoon,
heart exposed and the musculature around it—
like shreds of linen I saw someone tear from an old
shirt, for sticking on a field of glue and repurposing
as collage. The noonday sun has not yet melted
its plush away. But to not have even gained more
knowledge of its powers, or the poignant tang
of a world just waking to spring, before a horde of flies
and wasps hover around its disintegrating proteins?
I could translate all this into words like hunger
or gift, witness or mercy. But I choose not to.
I consider the breath that unraveled so quickly, how
the future briefly arrived, without fanfare or song.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
