He Kept them There All Year
       

When my neighbor passed last winter a snow-stacked branch
          collapsed onto his glass aviary & drew a crack
in the sky. Birds teemed out—a map of the world
          still green in their peanut brains—to the ice-shawled
meadow & licks of Nor'Easter. Slipways
          were missing, the long whiff south & congregations
of flight. Inside the broken garden, heat lamps poofed dark
          & plants began to gray. Winding in circles
above the frozen coy pond where the images should have appeared
          by now, only flags of linen.

Some of them gave up on a dream-garden miles away
          & seemed to makeshift a worship of the neighbor's body:
their heads pointed toward him, toward the glass, toward
          rusting tools, toward the air; they must have trusted him
once to keep creating the world,
          but now his white limbs gray
& their wings phantom the snow.

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Copyright © 2013 Bill Neumire All rights reserved
from Estrus
The Aldrich Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission