Advice to a Friend on the Edge of Divorce
P.J. Stanskas
Do your remember when your brother
set the homing pigeon coop on fire?
It was during the day,
when they were flying the currents
above your childhood, oceanside house.
Most scattered when they found the ashes,
took refuge in elms
or rust-painted rain gutters
and watch the ashes swirl omens
in the wind of one bird's wings.
She tread air in the space
where her pen had been,
refused to believe the evidence
or disordered wire and embers below her.
She strained to keep
regular, wing-beaten time
in the air cage she constructed
for herself of memory
and wistful bits of dust,
of smoke and ash pulled from the air,
until she fell into the wreck, exhausted.