That We Can Be Broken - A Bird Spirit Speaks Of Beginnings Poem by Warren Falcon

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Citizen! What have they done with all the air? - Victor Serge


1


I began

a bird flown down a chimney,
an empty house hidden in a
mountain valley, a night time
fire upon surrounding hills,
a moonshine still's signal flame,
a bootlegger's warning,
a silent spirit conjuring
drip by drip
metal and grain.

No blue fire therein.

Suddenly spun,
some beckoning thing
wings between night's crumbled
brick and rusted tin,
white rock and
a wide sky,
braced by
a
closed
encircling valley.


2


Here
is a Presence
beyond illicit fires
bearing witness to evidence found,
remains of flight, contrived escapes
stopped by panes,
walls striped in ramming panic,
of ritual and a broken neck,
petrified wings displaced.
Now remote is the open space
they once could range.


3


Descending the hill in unplanned rehearsal
for what has become a destined association,
our mutual confession is invisibly drawn.

A ruined one-room church appears,
a cemetery plot weed-hidden behind this
once sentinel house long remote to men and
as present as God, my own presence is bound
to his who stands confounded now as three,
one above grave, one within it, and me
in between, one eye upon him, the other
upon sagging dirt where bones and a
ragged shirt share an unexpected
moment of veils confused in sunlight's
disarray of leaves, wood, of stone and
shadows frozen there, not breathing
for us all in un-storied astonishment.

Here horseflies feast.
Upon weathered stones are
only creases where once were
names, dates, even God's Word,
chiseled by a now unknown hand,
an impression only, one among many,
reduced to no plot but that of Providence
left to surmise swatting at Eucharistic
flies proving only flesh and only blood,
a flood of questions eventually exhaled,
and exhaling still, waiting beside
a white rock with wings,
ignoring fires,

leaning into changes.


4


There are uses for wings -

thoughts,
ramming walls,
and panes,
earnest though
contrived escapes.


At first midnight in stillness,

wait.


A white rock,
wings,
a still,
ignorant fires,
illicit spirits
lean into changes.


5


In arms
we carried It
as one does
a child

yet it was
He who carried us,
both bird and man,

who cried
openly
on the way

for our presence
solid in his arms,

he who did not care
who saw his tears shed,
head down,
beneath spring blossoms,

living presences
within bestowing
strength,
order
from
stone and remnant wings.


6


How all this will turn.
I do not burn to know.

I only yearn here,
air and more,
of air now air
all the more
in sustained
moments
without height.

Something returns
or turns inward
that may be climbed
to rest upon

or fall again to
some chimney
life to be found,
itself a winged burden.

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