The Tale Of The Dove Poem by Tir Last

The Dove perches in a rusted cage
By the musty window,
once white feathers dirtied and grey.

The Man awakens and slinks down into
a nearby chair, his favorite.
He twirls a feather in his calloused hands-
too strong, too large, to treat it with care.

The Macaw lights down upon windowsill,
cawing and squawing shrill-
tapping the glass pane facing the Dove,
tap-tapping.

Wheezing,
the Dove offers a weary ashen reply.
Flapping her wings, sagged and shorn.
The hands that cut were too burly,
too big, too strong.

The Man waggles the feather her way-
tut-tutting at the Dove,
'Surely you can do better MY love.'
The Macaw cackles mockingly.

Day in,
He tosses
a quickly greying sheet
Over her. Sudden.
The Nothingness.

Day out,
He comes home,
Too weary from the day's labor,
labor that only a man could do,
to think of the Nothingness that is
and the Nothingness that will be.

He removes the sheet.
The Macaw lands on cue.
Cackling. Tap-tapping.

Every day in seven
The Man twirls round and round,
spinning as a king delirious with power,
dancing to an unheard melody and
laughing as giddily as a child
who has torn the wings from a bug.

In reply the Dove blinks as quickly
As a man hiding tears,
[Or perhaps, revealing his fears? ]
Sickened, unfed, unkempt.

Her puffed chest heaves quickly,
Her heart putters and stutters-
wheezing long and airy, desperately.

She flaps her wings, shoddily shorn,
maddened by the man, the Nothingness.
To only escape to the woods, darkened by dust.
To be free.

In her desperate frenzy she
Slips from her perch
and spirals down, down.
Rebel metal shears flesh and feather,
A sigh, a wheeze, eyes cloud over.

The Man laughs merrily,
The Macaw cackles with glee.
[In this scene sublime,
I die every time.]