Poems that Resonate Kintype-wise

I remember:
when impatient down at last gave way
to strong shoulders, when envy and pale fancy
were set aside for shrieking, whirling games
in rich wind-riffled colours.
I remember broad lazy buzzard circles,
the silent stalking of owls,
entire congregations of us wheeling
like a hive-mind, flocking, murmurating.
I remember freedom.

I remember

the day the wind
wouldn’t hold me, anymore.
It faltered. I felt it rise the way it should –
and pass me by, untouching.
As breath failed in my lungs
it returned, holding, buoying
and I circled and climbed.
I was still flying. But the wind,
the wind had dropped me, and in that moment
I knew.

I had lost the sky.

I told no one.

I gathered myself,
arranged my plumage preened and shining,
one last time. I stretched out
long, slender albatross wings
and leapt from the cliff’s-edge,
one last time. The sea-wind,
racing up the rock face,
made all its usual enticements:
liberty, seduction, if you come with me…
I would have it keep its promises,
while I still could hear them.
Just one last time.

Far off, over a dark sea,
I sought and seized a storm-cell.
Not to court its lightnings,
not to dance between its raindrops,
not to steal away its bruising purples
for twilight feathers. No longer.
I drove hard amidst the thunderclaps
to the silence at its heart,
where the wind chokes on its own tail,
suffocates.

As I passed beyond the last living wind,
it did not whisper to me.
Not one apology. Not one last caress.

I fell.

I dove, falcon-sleek,
dropping faster than a hailstone.
I plummeted from one silence
to a deeper one, and its darkness
filled my ears and nose and mouth.
The sea-currents tumbled me
til I could no longer remember
where the sky had gone.

I had not known the sea,
no more than to stroke her surface.
Perhaps brush shoulders,
here and there.
I had the sky: how should I have known?

She picked my locks.
Her rippling fingers
rotted free my worthless,
waterlogged feathers,
slicked my skin.
Golden eagle-eyes clouded
and bleached to silver,
leaching colour
into her dark depths.

I shimmer, now.
I am a lithe thing,
curving more smoothly
than any thermal.

And on clear nights,
little glowing, rising plankton
reflect against the surface,
a scattering myriad of glittering lights:

twice as many stars
as any sky.