We interrupt your regularly scheduled program to share - GASP - a poem! Hope you enjoy. I wrote this one when I was at the Chulitna Lodge Residency in Alaska (photos of that below).
FEATHERED BUT FLIGHTLESS
Feathered but flightless,
Weathered bright mess,
I hobble from town to town and place,
Hither slither,
Like a string-torn zither.
I’d pull teeth for a living,
But they won’t let me.
I’d sing a song to make you hack,
They won’t let me.
I would flash the world,
Unfurled,
My true self,
Dusty plumage and all.
BUT see me approach.
THEY shut their doors, numbed and profitable.
WON’T you please listen, as if to a creaking tree.
LET the rhyme laden sap slop on.
ME, a foundling chirper, regurgitation,
Hounding, a blur, lurid hatred.
Your best guess?
Feathered but flightless.