Silver Bird Poem by Rod M.Peters

I drag my feet through nameless streets
Wasting away in the throes
Of metallic death-rattles.
The sound of my soles awakens
A reluctant choir of night phantasms.
I carry a sack of painted masks
That weighs me down heavily.
Punctured gutters drip over stains
Resembling chained ravens
And a spectral face lurks behind
The broken glass of an Oculus window.
I see his one staring cold eye, defiant,
And my own image reflecting on it;

An eye, looking through an eye,
Looking through an eye, looking…
And a fateful hand tears the Moon from the sky
Casting it into a well of forgetfulness.

Upon turning corners there's always
Someone blocking my progress.
I look at his sweaty, strained neck
And his back-borne sack brimming
With fluttering birds struggling
To break free into the night.

I hear voices and see a glimmer of light
Coming out of a murky window pane.
In an old Victorian sitting-room
Wallpaper hangs in tatters,
Tables and chairs in disarray, overturned.
A grave looking figure in a black gown
And scholarly cap rails over something,
Scolding a smiling Harlequin,
Trying pointlessly to catch him
In his torn butterfly net.
Madness mocking Reason, no doubt,
But in the end they agree to a truce
And both drink a glass of Port.

My shadow is caught on a rusty nail.
I leave her begging there and walk away.
A child offers a half-eaten apple
In exchange for my wrist-watch;
I sit down to lunch not knowing what time it is.
The masks pluck up courage and crawl
Out of the sack and into a lidless manhole.

A flock of Origami birds flies
Undoing the cunning spell.
The listless Moon sighs
At the bottom of a well.

An old balding man snatches my hat away
And hundreds of baby rabbits hop free
Out of my hollow head.
Each one recites a poem by heart
And I marvel at the treasure-trove of ideas
Thriving in forced seclusion within my mind.
A year goes by and my face is a dark,
Featureless cavity, until one day, when
Out comes the head of a silver bird.

Again I stumble against the back
Of him who carries the sack of birds;
It's now empty.
No need to ask him to turn around
To know he has my own face.
Finally, I walk past him;
He doesn't recognize me.
I run to rescue the Moon.