You huddle before me, drip-dry feathers flattened
in tight spaces born between truth's cold storage
and all your fingers dare express. They tremble,
loose letters fallen from an alphabet:
"My mother never wanted me. How could she?
She never wanted herself. How could she?"
I hear you in noisy places hung between your eyes
and mine receiving you.
How strange this loudsilence perching wild in our gnarled branches.
Your voice is a scared starling that darkens in swallowed shadows;
My hands are scribes who try to net your words
as butterflies laze languid and content,
browsing summer's burnt offerings,
the browning bee balm and yellow phlox.
They swoon to sip sweet dregs, taking only what they please.
My camera snaps, a useless appendage-
You slip past me as I adjust my shutter speed.
A caged bird cannot sing. And you are not there
But here: A timid chin lowering into a bachelor blue sweater,
the arch of a wrist lifting its slender stem as if to emphasize
how seldom it has been held.
You writhe and wriggle around Shame's crimson cheeks;
they blaze like blood-red carnations, enslaved to living
and prostitute to the dead.
Your tired petals droop upon slack shoulders of neglect.
Yet look! Our arms are strong stalks that crisscross and connect,
create a hammock to hold hesitation, horror, regret
as your ruby throat opens and closes:
a carnivorous plant who eats and eats and is not fed.
And since you have forgotten,
shall I then weep the rains for you
until you can rain upon yourself?
And rub bone-dry sticks of memory to light those fires
that smolder white- hot beneath your noonday stares?
Shall we join Together?
Bright-winged wayfarer floating Home.