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
