Birds of a feather nest together, weave dandelion-thorn flower crowns.
A primordial giant towers over dollhouse hallucinations, reaches out to embrace the
astral overstory with atlas arms, as the harvest air teases the huddled fledglings
below with a playful, probing incense of ripening decay.
It watches as they swing through deadfall moors, banal steppes, flowered meadows, stepping off
the perch to greet a coral s k y
watches as the weary sun clocks out early, griping and groaning about unpaid overtime,
watches as their wood-peck chirping calcifies into a serrated silence, watches as her stupid
barkless flesh is tenderly skewered by an echo, rubbed raw by the logger’s sandpaper of
WhatIfitcouldhavebeendifferentWhatIfwe(I?)madeamistakeWhatifwecouldhave
sat on this bench as part of a together again, flown south for the winter wing to wing,
etched countless friendship bracelets in the woodwork of time—the songbird’s dirge it can only
watch, but if birdbrains could speak tree, they would say that no sprout under this vast canopy is
without scars; a tree’s grisly agony might yet yield syrup, despite the pain of the tapper.
