Cock Robin

Not eat the thing you took.  Not pluck its feather, peel its skin.

Not kiss your own face on the mouth, imagining

the tasting.  Nor bury the thing you bring down from the sky.

Not interpret the meaning of its cry.  Not clothe the cooling thing

In woolens.  Not reel it in.  Not wind it while it writhes.

Not breathe hard while you work, not speak of it, not burrow in.

But barely look upon the garden where the weight fell, sudden.

Where the falling broke it open, the plummet stopped.

Where rain falls down in dying angles and damage blooms.

Not touch the entry wound.  Not stitch it up.  Nor enter.

Not with a finger.  Not the Viking eye.  Not wonder.

But leave be what you took.  But let what spills congeal.

And wager everything you own the grass grows over it in time.

It cannot rise again.  The sky assists this with its rain.

And the garden, and the mind.

“Cock Robin” is from Swallow (Mariner Books, 2002).