Feeder emptied

          by the smartest of birds-- crows bully away with flapping

purple wings all the bright ones--- the blue, the red, all the winged who all ache

for seed-- a collective of need.

          When a sparrow flew in through the window the promiscuous woman with crowblack hair said A sparrow is a bad omen...be careful, and cued, my life split into shards of obsidian. Even now, I remember, remember the echoe of her omen. Had I not palmed away the cold

          feathers: body of sparrow and buried her in earth, would my life have been 

different—path paved in feathers and blood-veined leaves fallen in their own due time. But now I spin

circles over stranger's graves with glitter in my hair sparkling

         down to black grass I rip a patch clean,  till my fingers bleed, I'm so hungry I pull from the earth 

a rib-- lick dirt and gnaw. 

Oh mirror, why have I not cracked and crunched you to silvery dust with my bare feet and buried all the obsidian reflectors-- for my outwards have come to mean

         more than the black horse drinking the stream, more than the willow-swept night, more than shadows on the moon, more than the ash of my beloved.

A mouth full of nest to heal me, I want the built-up wildness of fledgling out-grown its nest, want found songs between my lover's long legs: to speak there in tongues. Most days I accept I have no beauty to sing-- no song, just this great canyon of need.