I Could Have Loved A Bird Poem by Mirjana Miric

I could have loved a bird.
You do not decide to whom
you gift
your first scarlet,
hopping through the atoms
until two lips are met.
You just set loose your throat
melancholic and wet
and scream.
Yet there you are,
a wanton,
a sadistic soprano,
wanting to carelessly burn
while the nightingale is trying to sing.
How do you match the woe?
Unless you fashion yourself a doe,
what do you offer to the one
who already has wings?
I wanted to love that bird,
but all I could do
was craft for it with human hands,
cage upon cage;
I would bend the branch and stone and riverbed,
I would rip and snip and cut the cloths,
I'd compile castles, bazaars, operas and oceans,
and cook them in my chest like it's a steaming pot -
and the bird would fly and wed itself a brook,
I'd rot inside the stockades tangled, threading,
roses and tulips and amethyst contrabasses,
until there would be nothing left for bending
but bare bones.
I heard him sing his love for someone else,
I heard him chirp his gentle heart for a Hoopoe.