BIRDMAN

Attic-high, a silhouette at a window, sits

spine folded. It’s you at your desk with lamp pulled low.

 

Look, a sixpence moon climbs through the cloudscape.

 

Don’t be distracted. Lay them out, Birdman –

they are your escape, your scripture.

This, your small collection of songbird wings

 

that beat no more. Predation, storm and sickness –

each tells its tale. You read their formulae.

Note how primaries may be emarginated

 

or sometimes notched. Through softness of coverts

feel a ghost-tug of wind. Every thread-fine barb

stroked in place, locked as a blade.

 

In your gnarled hands you turn them, like apologies

unspoken. Hum a refrain that has no words, but

 

begins with a wren, that thimble

of air-held flight no bigger than curled breath.

Chestnut and lightest of all.

 

Lands as goldfinch do, on thistle.

The mid-flight flicker of tarnished yellow

a bugle call of sunlight.

 

Ends with mimicry of starlings.

Pitch brown, buff-edged. No longer green sheen glossy,

their spangled winter gone.

 

These your feathered treasures, Birdman, cannot reply.

Unheard in your eyrie, their silence nests.

 

vii. 2025