There have been these... feathers, afloat on an eternal
sea for as long as the burning iron hull of my memory
holds in wasted stubbornness against the weight of the
stilled tide beneath endless empty hands grasping
for the moon and finding only burnt fingertips
as they brush too close to the sun.
I first saw them when I crushed one underfoot walking
slowly towards the horizon on petrified waters
that clung to my feet with each step echoing the desperate
pleas I'd heard on the wind from every window and
every pair of lips cracked apart by snow and shutting
just in time for me to think I imagined it all.
I thought of falling birds streaking towards firmament
and finding air enough to burn away their broken bodies
before, blind in one eye, with two crippled wings,
they became water once more as their father's tears
fell with the raindrops onto an ocean seasoned already
to be indifferent to yet another dissolving pillar of salt.
These feathers outlive cold iron bodies with flaming hearts that
stay moored to the waves afraid to be adrift
on an endless ocean of nothing but ancient corpses
with even older invisible fish growing fatter with each
bite of death, rich and full, and so desperate am I
to get away that I will pick up every last feather and fly.
(written a while ago, just realized it wasn't on this blog)
