pleasure

eating birds, wings all bones and
feathers like they were meant
to raise my thoughts up and
remove me from your death

tiny coverts straining to push past the tubes
and morphine and beeps that saturate the
landscape of your room
lifting me over the insistent tick
of the clock on the wall -
the present fluttering around the fading beat
of your heart;

if I had a flock, a waiting feast of
downy chests laid open on my palms, the
pleasure of reminiscences that was nostalgia
could swell and heave time backward -
each mouthful, each resigned flap would
put me closer to the perch I imagine
assembled in the stands of my youth

a collected species of memory straining to
thrust past the cage of your slowing
breath and thump free from
the smell of stale bleach and yellow light
tethered, pecking at the sill as the evening drops
Winter’s brood to the asphalt

their taste lingers with the bitterness of
an unfinished life, not the sweet forgiveness I had hoped
to flood across my palate