2 nights running
the bird with the cobalt blue
beak and neck which this family
had acquired as new
sat in the north-west corner
of whichever room we chose
to inhabit, so it couldn’t run
or escape to its fatal foes.
but the bird who couldn’t run
as long as it was sat
in a northern westerly corner
looked grim, sad and flat.
I loved the thing so unknown
that I shouted at my world
and upon the first acceptable thing
I loved, myself I hurled…
“I love you, don’t go”
but it was cruelty
and only the blindness of charity
is too stuborn to see.
so I put it in a Southern corner
to see if it could fly.
the following morning I cried
to see the bird curl up and die.