Bird


Bird, there is no instance of your flight,
no room beside the cloud in your big eye.
You broke the blue glass, asked me to play
with no lines inside the sharp sky.

Bird, your wings churned my desire to butter,
stuck me in the makings of your motion.
I remain at the bottom of a nothing
your feathery devices grip to make you rise.

No water can wash you from these surfaces,
no wave from any depth of me can reach
the flat forever ricochet of sight,
the edges of your life, like crystal dreams
that overtook reality and thought
and left behind kaleidoscopic lights.


Donald Zirilli
1999