Broken bird, high on the mountain
Where the green-blue lakes swam with your reflection
And the willow-sad reeds brushed your feathers
Off into the endless sky,
Sapphires dripping off your wings
The eyeless wind against your beak
Like an ungrounded angel
Soft and dainty stretched from wing tip to tip
Ropes tight across your chest, Struck
The lightning storm that electrified
And killed your dreams of those
Summer days in the hot, hot heat
Carrying a dream, dying in your chest
Struggling to breathe, burning you alive
Heaving with fluttering heartbeats
I feel comfort from the warm rock
I watch you die from.
Little bird on the mountain
Do you hear it?
Hollow and echoed, the bones inside you
Shattered and coughing, lungful breaths of mustard yellow
That scrape your marrow,
Feasting the fatty meat between your breast and stomach
Bugs, maggots, twigs, and leaves
Does your beating heart slow with the poison that infects
Your veins?
The cherry drop of poppy dew,
Like branches below you.
Crystal and hard, refusing to bend and breathe
Into the earth
That dirt that restlessly breathes and moves
And comforts you
The wind sees all
With its fingers across the grasslands
And feet flexed between beach sand
Lifting and carrying it from land to land
The wonders of the earth
And the death that adores it
Broken bird, are you truly broken?