Not The Birds

(Lines from another time, circa 1997)

Certainly we are not the birds. 

Though I have seen some-

Wind-clung drifters: 

their lively retiring feathers 

tucked privately under. 

Others, with gulps of sky in their pockets, peering.

They. They had been bathing hoofless in the firmament all morning 

But down here 

in the drizzle, 

It’s harder to be the wind inside.

Ears weeping, 

Down hear in the mud

in the shadows, scribing slush

Down, hear where we are 

Faces of what we face, forgetting 

light, buoyant, instruments 

of the oxygen gods 

Down and Here 

Wearing faces of what we forget

shifting out of rhythm 

with the seasons 

in the saddle of a dying dialect

Days are the trouble 

and the sweet becoming exile

They get lighter going down

when dusk and her descendants crowd me with their coming 

All morning - The last pinch of day is drunk

where fire tickles an eager sky

from the peaks of overgrown canyons.

Heaven is feasting on itself 

in my eyes 

while I straddle the need to defend

empty spaces.

Photos by Keane @barganews