A feather from your white bird
pressed
between pages heavy with ink
and spaces
remembers its part in flight
(towards or away?)
cannot even twitch
free of semi-comas
now.
The ornithologist flinches
at this treatment
but he is South for a month
and cannot send
an electronic reprimand but
for a dash-
silent treatment-

You remember that day
never far from your pen
you write, "Someday,"
the song in the air
that day
will catch in your ear and there
die.
Bits of bone and keratin
will be blood-borne
miracle of medicine
right into the niche
that held vows and memory;
will break some
unbreak the only
(that day) refrain
refrain.