Birds
It was before golden morning
when the bird in my belly flew out
and tried to sing.
The snake in my head
swung up from the shadow,
a scaleback s-curve of mirrors blurring,
blackberry eye hinged like a pocketwatch
unblinking till the bird dropped
a split seed of candlelight for
the wolf in your belly
biting for blood.
It was full moon dark
when the owl in my wilderness
woke hungry to fly.
She was
tied to a string
black banding her leg, hanging
a pendulum in feathery vertigo
trance-trapped, back and
forth, up and down,
out
of focus.
The snake in my head asked to be fed,
curled in the moon pool
where light lost its way, a
reticulated
rebus hissing the metafizz,
while the wolf in your lab coat
unwrinkled the dazzle
where ice-glamour hid,
crushed in his paw
the prism that blinds.
With one ivory bite
he sliced the black band
and the birds
the birds were
gone-colored light.
~February 2013,
revised January 2014
posted for real toads
Sunday Feature Artist: Elisabetta Trevisan
This is an older poem that appeared on a defunct anonymous blog to very limited readership, which I have revised and reworked for the prompt.
Artwork (Chimera/The Sound of Thunder) copyright Elisabetta Trevisan
Used with permission.
Ms. Trevisan's website: here
Her fine art prints site: http://betta.redbubble.com/
You can also find her on Facebook.
Her fine art prints site: http://betta.redbubble.com/
You can also find her on Facebook.
