Herds of Birds in Words

Lay with me and see what I speak.

Hold this poem up to the window

and see what shapes it throws across the floor.

Like a kaleidoscope, watch it slowly change.

The clouds above softly rearrange,

and you realize your withered age.

Wrapped in a blanket of grief,

The harvest moon chose to speak

And a bottle of wine was my response.

Pour your poor half-cup of oil into the air,

And I’ll rebound, dancing in the falling water.

Your name echoes with the scrapes of gravel

This series, this string of events lends unraveled.

Disfigured, tormented shapes stretch their colors,

Not knowing that they would be seen by others.

But the dear cut in to tell me how he met his fate,

He became an over-salted, after thought on your plate.

Taste the bubbling brooke, caught by you, you crook.

Shook by the look of what you took, what you cook,

Everything speaks, Everything seeps and leaks.

It will overrun what was won and what you shunned,

All clinging to the colors, the wonders of these words.

Hooked together and thrown across the floor.

Scattered, but not shattered, the meanings are there,

Perching and lurching from the window where you stand,

With this poem pressed to the glass by your ringless hand.