Weightless

he heard the warbling whispers descend,
flapping their bristly wings,
like the hungry old pigeons of Trafalgar square,
their greedy beaks shining,
scrounging for a sight of her;

see how her body soars,
disconnected from her soul, they said,
like the shadow of a gliding hawk,
frightening the rose buds at noon;
it is her mind, like a thought bubble,
hovering over its prey,
tethered to her face by a skein of angled lies;
the murmurs fluttered behind him
like hummingbirds in retreat,
listen to her voice when she deigns to reply,
words emerging from perforated pauses,
like ravens lifting one by one
into the painted twilight;

he saw in her eyes
the emptiness of the pre-dawn sky,
the melding of orange and black and gold,
a freshly starched morning,
with clouds like rounded ice cubes
in embroidered pillow cases,
and tumbling down through the stirring truth,
a solitary silver-blue feather,
in its pearl dusted wake,
the ancient song
of a wounded Himalayan monal
crying in the snow;

can’t you hear, they screamed,
her hyphenated silence
roosting between the reaper’s empty nests;
gashes from sharpened talons,
sewn by insomniac bats,
with tarred new moon beams;

he watched the feather hesitate,
for just one endless moment,
as the universe made up its mind,
as the wind slowly let it go,
and it fell weightless,
sighing,
into his open hands.

For the Poets United midweek prompt “Birds”, inspired by the Blue Feather in Richard Bach’s “Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah”.
“Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.“