Fly Away
I am hauling all our rugs, books,
house plants, our glasses wrapped
in bubble wrap and old duvets ,
all our memories neatly boxed up,
every object we own all jumbled,
carrying from the borrowed van
into our new home. I am bending
at the knees. I am judging the structural
stability of cardboard to ensure
our horde will stack. Tessellation
is essential. My shoulders radiate
like embers. Your nerves are glowing
filaments of thin tungsten.
In bone branches above our heads,
a welcoming committee of starlings land.
We watch the tree fill with wings.
For a moment, there is nothing
separating us and the murmuration,
all the voice that sing to the dizzying blue,
calling in one rippling, multi harmonic, chittering
warming song that echoes and shimmers and writhes
and separates and shimmers and echoes again.
You take my hand. One small body leaps
and falls upwards, soars up, up into
the vastness. We are too heavy,
too landlocked for flight.
So we watch it become invisible.
This, too, is an act of devotion.
Thanks again to Bristol Tonic for the chance to write something new. My prompt this time was ‘Fly away with me’, which coincided nicely with my life.