Caged Bird

Sometimes you just have to write and see where it takes you

Our marriage, the thing of summers past

Long lay dead the sparrows, their diamond eyes, still.

How her feet moved, bruising the golden wheat

Chariots and laurel wreaths carried, her rose-pink gristle.

Apollo kissed her honeysuckle thighs, she wept

This Nowhere Girl, bringing carrion to my nest.

Regurgitated covenants, a place holding at dinner.

Now I'm an old man, sun-leathered, sea-weathered.

A Catalepsy fable, breadcrumbs leading to dissimulation.

My hands now like gnarled roots, puncture wounds in mother's milk,

Beneath clay and soil, undisturbed, I buried her, tears and ribbons.

From my metacarpus blossoms a new love, with pen and ink

Immortal words, carved in my withered bones, I set my little bird free.