Iron Bird Woman
Mint swollen
sky exiting
in fowl-happy grove
downwhirls
a time-freed female
colossus
flown next to
squares who wince
at avant-garde
trombone solos
enow smile
seraphically
to witness her
albatross control
as she rockets into
splash mud
She makes sounds
with her lips resembling
chirrups impossible
to pass through or into
short sharp trombone
songs of certain insects
senseless ceaseless
immersive whistles
Local bird
watchers hiccough laughter
as light
worsens to say, “She’s ugly, isn’t she?”
furtively
In odd-shaped shadows Iron Bird Woman
appears
to escape as the Help Line lights up
Dark horses whose
nightly frolics spread them
numberlessly clop
and whinny over rolling hills
to roam free ignorant
of village life servitude
of ploughing,
pulling, pushing, and labouring
Leaden horses
rear to the high brassy sounds
shake their
manes and gallop at a right angles
away from the misty
night-time human village
into velvet
gray hillsides into falling light
Two sightless
folks sitting on a fence-rail
think nothing
amiss in slightly-off birdsong
and talk about
what it’s like to see or fly
or run free
like horses over the meadows
Riled-up
metaphysicians and doubtful alchemists
find nothing
usual to abut this manifestation:
the birds all trombone,
swoop, chatter, and nest
till their
voices are still save for sleep’s murmuring
It seems now
that she has come for prisoners
in her fury,
not for our pleasure her warrior spirit
-to incarcerate
all
whenever she
falls
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