This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly. ― Rainer Maria Rilke
The sky is blue with clouds. Yes, it takes a long time Not to see this. It takes until the crow is not too close And close enough to see the bulging eye, the violet in her Slow blink lid. Three crows circle her, then go Leaving me alone. I scour the bald beach and the blank air For anything else compatible with crow. The sea glitters. What do you suffer with?
He told me once, combing the bladder wrack together, Train your eye to curve, to cut cross-wise. That’s how we’ll find what we’re after. The treasure.
Sometimes light hides more than darkness does. In the high trees the air strains At the violation of a crow’s wing, The wing da Vinci figured would usher Umpteen glistening machines. She is skywardness stopped dead By a kite string stretched between the shore pines. Sky drowning in sky. Hanging by a bone-thread.
A world of purchase lies at her twisting bird-feet, But air is become the altar and the anvil.
Alula! the bastard wing, Black cap of the executioner, Black flag of refusal to surrender, Wings turned in To rotor blades, oars, a winnowing fork. Something better becoming The colour of bitumen, on the point of being Dismembered. Every angle of attack, every outburst Knifing the ether, tightens the string.
The wind drops from the windsock. The air has turned to stone. A fine line, birdwreck, comes between caught and free.
Frantic, she swings From her skyhook, Sky-hooked.
And the day takes the weight of it, Knowing things fall from above. And when she does, I have to Tease out string from talon. Touching this is barely more than empty
………….But when The heart revives it has a lot to prove—
A crow stares out of the biting wind ………….A belief in love that will not Be made ……………………Nothing of.