Superficial

Skim the stone on the surface

watch it butt against reflecting light

until falling through surface

out of sight it drops

to a darkness

or a peace

depending upon your vantage point

I for one would welcome

a life spent below, than above

listening to the mocking calls of unseasonal green parrots

filling trees with their envy

they make everything brighter it is true

yet something about the jarring

competitive nature of their plumage

strikes me as less sincere than

the drab and disliked pigeon with

old face and white circles around

his rumey blinking eyes

who can always be relied upon

to lose a toe in Winter

I think of how often I have watched

something curl to the side of a street

and wait to die

how a part of me felt helpless

inhabiting stages where stories

rent through armor and pierced

my conscience

after the third pigeon in a box

tucked beneath my office shoes

my boss told me

look, this is enough

he preferred I collected his shirts from the dry cleaner

bagfuls of shopping for his wife

my perk was

one day I could grow up to be like him

ignore dying birds in the street

driving silver BMW to my Thursday mistress

whilst another slave worked after-hours

filing life upward like blind builb

it came to me then, ungluing my eyelids

leaving behind one word

WRONG

written in magic marker on his desk

I took the cooing box I’d hidden

and the pigeon and I went home

to a cold flat with no furniture

where he proceeded to try not to die

and I watched understanding very well

the hue of his life

for I am a stone who sank before

she saw the sun and only the moon knows

the way to lift me up