A Bird With Her Brain

By: Jonathan Davies

Oily, drenched, this is how to fall as birds do –

a mess of old feathers and avian noises,

creaking and groaning like classical birdsong.

They learn as we did, by recitation

and reading aloud. It’s the fall that makes noise.

Air swoosh-ing perpendicular to crook’d wings

the way piano strings are bent out of shape by the hammer.

Left hand and right hand in motion – contrapuntal,

music crossed at the wrist.

This is the kind of movement that makes heat

by touching flesh to ivory – friction is a non-conservative force.

Thermodynamics, alchemy, did Newton really not know

why copper is more useful than gold?

We read to each other and grow old. Old fruit is chewier,

with inadvisable string-bits.

Reflections in wet concrete – the chemical composition of faces,

seen through dirt and rain, scars carved into the pavement.

Recall how Rachmaninoff saw the Isle of the Dead in black and white,

writing anyway his symphonie téchnicolor,

a wizard dreaming up shades of yellow only found in cinemas

and heaven. I would be buried in your DVD library near the old films,

if I had to die one day –

I’ll finish falling first, and when the sun splits the clouds

my wings will dry,

and I’ll take to the sky, again,

as the albatross.

One more flight across the sea forever

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Jonathan is a writer from the Midlands, UK. He lives just out of sight and uses public libraries.