[she says]

Hollow my bones

Inject them with air

Marrow once out, atmosphere fill me

With latticework socketed pockets of sky

Laced amid faceted boxes of calcium

Each wall translucent

Veined and accented

                                        paper thin agate

Skylight beneath an encircling sheath

Calcified, drift-white

                                        bored out

                                        burred clean

hollowed out zones

                                        Emptied and filled

Essence ineffable rudely infused

A plenum a vacuum awash with a way

Envelope

Bonded to tendon to muscle to flesh and to

Skin under

Feathers and pinions

Clockwork and talons

Engaged or imagined

[she postulates rising]

                                        Rising is purpose

[she execrates falling]

                                        Falling is not possible

Each move beneath

directs itself up

to a still

             farther starting point

poised to plunge higher

~~~

[she says]

The earth and air were not made to be neighbors

Cast athwart one to the other smashed hastily

Lean into potent uncertain futurity

Push off on high on invisible potency

Riverine flow

Crystalline luxe

Cerulean   

                Void 

~~~

I spread I flap and I flail almost floating

A gasp then the chirping         

                                       songs and screams

A fall

aflutter

                                       fleet and fleeing

Fascinated plummeting   

                                       alive and leaving….     

                                                Casting off

                                                Casting off

That caged and perching life

That human beastly scuttle

For this

                                        fleet and fleeing

                                        alive and leaving

                                        arc and contour

I will fly and I will rise

                                        until the darts strike home

[more she says not]

~~~
[Photo (unconnected to the poem) by the blogger.]

© 2017 George M. Wallace; all rights reserved.