Aviary
       

My heart had become home
to Brooklyn's bright flocks of feral
parakeets flown from their perch
on freezing wires and winter-bare
branches. Left to themselves they
kept a noisy wordless communion.

        Old women wrap themselves
        in a rainbow of acrylic and fling open
        their windows. They cover their sills
        with crumbs and seeds, croon budgie
        budgie to the empty air. Gone,

gone all the small sojourners, improbably
to roost awhile in the four dark
chambers of my heart. No heart can
hold a feathered riot long.

They flicked their tails and went, a merry
metastasis, a mess of molt and shit—
a grip of beak and claw.

                                        I hold out my arm
and watch the clear cocktail in its slow
drip through the tube. We sit in a row,
each of us tethered breath by breath
keeping time.

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Copyright © 2015 Miriam Kotzin All rights reserved
from Boulevard
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission