Who

can still speak from their cage? It’s been quiet for a while now.
A wind came through &
drowned out the last of the
chatter. It was a terrible chatter.
Then the rain came and we thought it
might clean us.
It did not clean us. They took pictures. You have them I assume.
Someone must have them.
There must be a record.
Of what we lived. Or that
we lived. I don’t expect you to care.
There used to be birdsong. A Carolina wren was piped in
over and over without
ceasing.
It did something to the latticework of our cages.
As if it all caught fire.
But it’s been a long time. Since we saw real fire.
Even that would be
better. I’d put my hands in it, I’d feel it with my fingers.
Sometimes I don’t know if I have
fingers, there is so little to touch and that power that
ferocity we had
to reach out—to reach out—
something was done to that. Something calming was
inserted into the picture.
Like a new pronunciation. And then the murmur stilled
in us. It passed us by. It left us here. It no longer felt necessary to look up
if the rain stopped for a while.
The want to look out failed.
I would feel for my eyes, I wld push at the shut lid. Is it
active. I’d run my hand
along the brows,
pushing. Is there a memory there. Will you
rise up in me. You…
It is possible to stop waiting. It is.
What arrives in the end is not silence—not that hem of the vast
emissary. What arrives is hunger.
So you decide it’s better not to want.
You decide it’s too hard to move.
You—how can I tell you this—you
still running to the school bus—humming—late from stopping to feel
the shocking forsythia
which wasn’t even there yesterday—
the sun not a horrible laughter—
the day not a pointless question—no—
all the questions still rimmed with shiny jagged edges,
I see you wanting to touch them all,
running your fingers—
there is so much to know—
every day sweeps away more debris,
and the long way round so full—so
promising—
how can I tell you.
There was a mockingbird which returned every year,
or one of its kin,
to a tree when I lived.
And I waited for it. Neither of us could see the cage then. Nobody
could.
Each spring the song rang out & the walls around us & the small yard
amplified the notes. It was a song.
I can feel the notes in the palms of my hands if I try.
They feel what it was to point,
to reach out.
They have erased my hands I think.
Or is it my ears.
I do not try to understand what happened.
I do not recall the smell of Spring.
As it shall not thaw again in my time.
Sometimes I remember roads.
How we were walking down them toward our freedom our refusal.
There were crows rivering overhead observing us.
We flowed in from all the directions. So many faces.
There was a huge movement toward one place, or was it one idea or
wish or need or promise.
We were fascinated by hope.
What was it we moved toward. That feeling dear friend, the toward.
I don’t expect you to remember.
The meeting place. The destination. What we believed.
There was much to be done.
The time was full of wrong.
I will breathe lightly indicating I do not know, I do not
ask to know
how many seconds I have left. There is
a number. It is exact.
Call yourself alive? says the light.
Even the dust is deafening.
I feel for it. I’d like to hold enough in my hand
to make—to make—what can still
be made.
Every now and then I imagine that it must be dawn.
Listen, I think, listen.
It’s like a snowstorm, this listening. It fills me up. No,
it is loaded up into me.
I would be its disciple.
I don’t speak because it appears the last word
has been spoken. Regarding this exchange
the last word has been
spoken….

There was a song everyone was singing.
We were walking together toward our unmaking our refusal.
Crows screeched overhead.
We flowed in from all the directions.
I could hear it in the distance.
The together has a strange sound.
Sometimes it was more like a shadow rising from us &
falling back
onto us. We trembled if I remember.
It was a kind of harvest.
We were supposed to recall the smell of Spring.
It was uploaded into us
again and again.
I remember streets, how real they looked each time they appeared
underfoot.
The windows blinked where many of us hid
or thought we hid.
The song was vast it overlooked no one.
What did it promise.
We walked in unison. We prepared to sing. Soon
we wld sing.
The earth was warm beneath our feet.