All The Birds

An eagle and a seagull circle
a dome blued green with age
with a golden cross above a fountain,
pulled apart in such a way
it fades into rainbow at the rough edges
where things don’t quite match
that pattern pulsing through the sky.

I think of you,
all your feathered stories,
all the birds I’ve been to get here,
and watch a thousand strangers stop
for a second in the mistaken belief
that memory is merely the imprint
of light that fell on us that day,
and not the feeling too,
not the reconstructed chorus
of what it was really like
to be there, right then,
and not again, not again
with the clouds like they were,
blown together just for you,
this multicoloured mist a mirror.

Not a home, but a heart,
wild and free
and full for this day,
spent on the edge of managed water,
knowing completely
that it is not us,
but the flowing wave
which longs to gush forth,
reveal the sacred colours
and sing the song of falling
like it should be sung,
with abandon, with relief,
with a reverence
reserved for the dead.

TRACE

Wind-up Bird Chronicles

By three

To build

Homes