Ode to the Canari

Caged wings of borrowed time,

trill sweet with lungs of stone,

trembling gold on the blunt edges of the crag.

Incandescent, burning in forgotten song.

You sputtered softly into engineered air:

The soft O of your lullaby cracked like the wound,

We once called progress for a farthing or two.

Stop.

The earth throbbed its slow dirge.

Unrelenting.

We hang you where lungs misremember the sky.

Stop.

The valleys of our youth surrendered slowly,

Long before the sacred scar branded the hills.

A grave.

But you.

You oscillate like time waiting for sand.

An obedient light,

Who taught you obedience, was it I?

The air tastes of Holy Water.

Mine,

Mine -

mine,

min.

Silent Sunday hymn sewing at the hem,

A seam stitched shut with coal-dust and sanctimonious slag.

Caged feathers flicker into filament.

Pulse is policy. Stay.

The lantern keeps the shape of your syrinx,

Silence is safety.

They canonised you as progress.

You did your duty.

Crowned by the thorns of human folly.

Mine mine

the word keeps digging.

Thud. Thud. Clank.

Run.

We carried you down as a promise.

We carried you up as a product.

Pallbearers of the ethics we postponed.

No. Not transcendence.

Death.

An ash feather on an open palm.

Caged in the bars

Of our yellow shame.