you whisper to their souls.

Fallen you lie: feathers barely ruffled
but you do not move.
This is not the habit of your kind.

It rises, it rises.
I sit before you on the grass and you watch me.
Motion is shattered in your wings;
in mine too, for I would move
to see reclaimed what seems not real,
not true above truth, but a dream,
distant as the countless stars.

I watch you till the end.
You in your fevered stillness,
given to this new dream that has pounced
to consume you. Wound tightly in reality
and buried in the soil we tread daily.

When you are gone (too soon, too slow)
in the afternoon, I remember. Yours is the story, seen,
carefully chosen and closely known,
of the promise in those hands unseen.
There we have found all that is taken
and all that is given in its place.