What-are-the-birds-doing-with-the-December-sky rap

Winter lounges, sodden and unused –

the sky is a washing-line of sorrows.

At night, the stream talks to itself;

becomes a dance floor for wintersong.

*

The wind does not care for my

predictions or predicaments; like everything,

it suspires, expires, rises again.

*

Day wakes, laden with blue.

I wonder how much words weigh,

and why the oak log splitting under the axe

shows sinews haphazard as memory;

and how it is that we can hold on

to nothing, even love.

*

All truths in the end are symbolic.

I am a metaphor for transience,

just as a bird is a metaphor for flight ­

– how a synchronisation of starlings

is an incarnation of wind,

maybe an act of God.

*

When the ash tree fell in the woods

its bunched keys hung like a roosting

flock of pipistrelles.

In my sleep, I said: leave

access points under the eaves

for swallows, bats, angelic hosts.

You heard me. Held me close.

© Roselle Angwin, 2009   in Bardo, Shearsman 2011