For your poems.
I’m feeling vague and poetry-y so here’s some vague poetry
***
I can never catch the bird within me
the one that thrashes against my ribs
I am only left with empty feathers, bent and broken
and the way my nails tend to dig
like angel’s wings that curve under shoulders
holding the numbness along her slate-stone back
nesting around her complacent smile
though her teeth have already begun to crack
have you ever heard the story? (I asked)
of that mouse inside the clock?
he still waits for the hickory-wood hands to tire and stop
has anyone told you? (I wondered)
about that piano full of rats?
those fools thought that music was fashioned from wires and glass
still, the colors spin and cycle
from winter to spring
from the old wilting annuals
to the bones little rodent graves bring
the way light still reaches under eyelids reminds me
that even when I am dead
I will hear the mourning doves
making their wildflower-thicket beds
woven between the white crosses
watching the tall sweetgrass weep
waiting to fall
waiting for sleep
