Linda M Crate’s poem our moment appeared here in May 2013.
dying sparrow
By Linda M Crate
By Linda M Crate
you are feathers, copious amounts of them–
falling down your hair, your mouth, your breast–
they dance in the wind like hymnals opening their
books to the zephyr speaking a language no one
can understand except for books and wind, and
hope which spreads itself among feathers like
yours that flit through your hair like butterflies
with tissue paper wings except they’re not
wings at all, but were parts of wings once an
oxymoron for the ages that you find all too amusing.
that joke really wasn’t that funny, but you laugh,
choking on your feather euphoria that trails down
your throat as weighty as stones, and you drown
in the weight of black and scarlet, green and
turquoise, brown, orange, and navy it is all too
overwhelming, and you open your eyes and you
are not there, you have wandered into obscurity,
like a plant killed by winter’s chill and blackened
into dust, fret not, this is where you’re meant to be.
falling down your hair, your mouth, your breast–
they dance in the wind like hymnals opening their
books to the zephyr speaking a language no one
can understand except for books and wind, and
hope which spreads itself among feathers like
yours that flit through your hair like butterflies
with tissue paper wings except they’re not
wings at all, but were parts of wings once an
oxymoron for the ages that you find all too amusing.
that joke really wasn’t that funny, but you laugh,
choking on your feather euphoria that trails down
your throat as weighty as stones, and you drown
in the weight of black and scarlet, green and
turquoise, brown, orange, and navy it is all too
overwhelming, and you open your eyes and you
are not there, you have wandered into obscurity,
like a plant killed by winter’s chill and blackened
into dust, fret not, this is where you’re meant to be.
