Bird Gift

Wear it on your finger.

I gave her this dead bird

Frilled in the snow, where every

Feather stuck like a toothpick

In ice, and she was warm.

“Every calamus is brown

Like that bark.”

And a dog did bark.

“It was ready to attack,

Black with hunger.”

She swallowed her lips

And told me so.

“You’ve plucked an eyebrow

Pulling your head away?”

“I’ve done so,”

Seeing the bird’s bald

Patch, white as the thin

Frozen milk of sky.

“Where else could it have flied?”

I didn’t know,

Except that it died.