WINTER ' FOURTEEN
Columibade by Jane Burn
We were burnt offerings.
Our shoulders dusted; sometimes ashen-grey, sometimes
tinged with browning in the buff.
The white ones, pure in your sight carry shadows on their backs,
yet you crave them, need their clean.
Magicians pull them, docile from hats – you command them
to your wooden cotes;
the sight of snowy feathers; this is how you picture angels.
Blood from clean ones –
scarlet yarn and hyssop on your dirt to cleanse the skin;
your sparkling seraphim. Praise that! And
cry to us for your crop-milk. Those pigeons, pecking on the streets
in dowdy coats, dismissed as rats my brethren are the same. They became disease because
they live amongst you, scavenge on your soot.
Our hearts are so much larger, beat much faster. We need air for wings –
you need it for words, for
reasons; why, why, why ? Need it for chanting. Our flight alone is prayer;
stay on the ground.
We looked on you when the reeds still rustled with spirits and the forests
were a scratch of fear.
We are vessels for the Spirit - we searched for land when water came to rinse
the world of you. We had a taste for olive.
We are innocence; are light with it. Psalm the heavens all you want and try
to raise the skies. You will never be birds.
Psalm 55:6 Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest
The Linnet's Wings Poetry, Winter 2014