Bird Cage
Birds drift in low
making slow circles
before dropping onto mahogany
toned faux leather brass
tacked perches evenly spaced
across the florescent lighted gloom
Their feathers are ill preened
grayed or thinning hard
to believe some could
have even flown
into this waiting cage
All these bird around the same age
silently watch more circle in
descending the same tired way
upon a perch to await their calling
from the waiting room
These looming buzzards do not
watch for other birds falling
dead from the sky or pick
at decaying meat near
their claw marked perches
Each waits knowing now
it is their time to be picked,
plucked, stuck, poked and measured.
Younger birds call to the old prompting
each to flit from one worn perch
to another where they nervously
smile just before the stick
Blood flows, dark red from a bony wing
into glass tubes with cork things or pee
yellow trickles into small jars
as some still feel the tinge
of the needle sting
“That’s all for now,” a
brightly plumed bird sings
her grip releasing anxious wings
I flap and fly out of this roost too
full of feathers shedding
from older birds dreading to fly
back into the fading promise
of a clear blue sky.
Gregory Zeorlin 1/29/2010 9:30am
© 2010 Gregory Zeorlin / Zeorlin Designs
