Does any animal float as well?
Resting on this peel of thickness
pedalling slowly, and honking
Duck taught the angels
how to fly – see them now
by the barrage, watching for tips –
just put your face in your armpit
and hang there, careless –
that is how to go about it.
Lessons such as that.
And how to remain calm
in the face of such rain
After duck stands up, wrings out his coat
he waves to the angels, who nod abashed
and calmly floats off into the sky
O’ cat
like the wave’s undulate swell
you surprise me with your disparity
your mammal necessity
O’ cat
you are as essential
as the comet’s tail passing
moulting Berenician fur all over the galaxy
O’ cat
your territory is a human place now
and you are a stone lodged in the human shoe’s rubber
go cat, hide – we cannot understand each other
All the other birds have fled
disturbed, as a magpie makes perch
upon the dirt-dust iron hook
where a selection of old nuts hang
His blue gaze is hammer and nails
as he fixes me in place, and then
stabs a hanging half coconut shell
repeatedly. Full of fat and gristle,
the carrion hang on the feeders
was not there ’til he arrived, and now
as he flies, he leaves behind
a small lamb whose eyes are gone.
Another one now takes a turn.
Her clean beak is too soon soiled –
she flies guiltily off. And I,
I watch the clean bones drop.
As for the flak of trembling feather –
they learned as much as they watched
in turn, they flap to floor and search
and slurp up all the fallen scraps
Absolute|Unrest 