Fallen Birds
Feathers and delicate bones assemble beside the skyscrapers like broken glass
prescribed to them like shadows
It’s just the way things are,
we still walk to work.
Sometimes, on our better days, we’ll sigh.
We’ll say they flew like Icarus, too close, too fast, too blind.
But infinity siren calls like the air at the end of a held breath.
And if you could fly, you would know.
You would know how the florescence beckons, how the glass hushes behind the mask of possibility,
You did know.
Maroon crystalizing over soft bellies,
Shaken skulls and twisted wings pile over concrete.
Of course the passing nikes don’t stop to mourn.
It is not until you hear the crying of the orphaned nestlings,
That you realize that fallen birds still wake to sing to us each morning,
of how we have sculpted from freedom, a crime.
