by Sarah Barber
Of a pair of owl-shaped stoneware cups
at least one will meet a bad end in a basement-
so eventually you’ll leave me to drink alone
forever. But a roof is no guard against wild
weather. Ask the pigeons in Pantagruel’s mouth,
which is not a pigeon-house. One breath
can turn air to arrow, a quick dividing, there,
in the throat. Any bird, could it measure its notes,
would find no pitch past the pitch of longing.
And the more usual losses pile up: salt-
and-pepper birds touch lips inadvisedly
in a friend’s child’s hands. A cat knocks over
a bird-finialed lamp. The surfaces of the world
are uneven. The best we can do is to lunch outside
while the wind makes wild, weak, useless
sweetness on the charm figure of another bird
in which just enough of song remains, against
the abominable blue and the rising storm
of my hypersensitive nerves, to appease us,
for once, with utensils, plates, the universe.
*Photo courtesy Mykl Roventine.