Too many stops. Too many pauses. Too many full stops.

When moments could have flowed fluid

Could have continued along time’s axis to unfurl experiences

Now unknown, now wondered about, now pondered on. I’m not shaken. But it’s never cathartic. It is forever suspense. It is forever remembrance.

It is not regret. I was who I was, and I am who I am. I cannot null that. It is, wishes, perhaps. It is, wanting, to exist as two, to stop, but to continue, to watch, to witness.

I am full stops; given to elective ethos and jittering convictions. And given to these full stops, I wander, wonder, what, what if, should, should have. What? Happens? After?

I’ve piled my books high.
Stacked them against the window.
He pecks
And he clucks.
He’s the greatest company!

I blow dust off the hardcovers.
He must think they’re sand dunes.
I’ve mountains
Of heaps
Over which he bounces and skips.

“Shoo! Shoo!”
He’s attacking me.
He seems plenty cross.
I guess he’s lonely.
But hey! So am I!

I haven’t been outside
In forever.
He hasn’t been outside
Since he flew in.
He must, like I do, like it here.

I read him a book.
He likes the tale;
The one of the windborne bird.
He seems not to like the one, though.
The one about the caged singing bird.

I read a book.
About sunlight
And moonlight
And about windows.
For that’s how they come in.

And I’m curious.
Curious enough.
And so I set about
with him flitting here to there,
picking, unpiling, unstacking.

Most books I shove into a trunk.
Some even manage to fit in the bookshelf.
I use it mostly for things.
Many things.
And a book or two.

The window.
This solitary window.
I open.
And there’s a flutter.
He’s gone.

But when I leave the apartment,
I always come back.
I always come back because I’m tired of walking.
So, I imagine that he will come back.
Yes, he will be back,
When he’s tired of flying.

for

    once,

   i would

love

      to be

         the poem

and

     not

         the poet

If dinosaurs still were
In my vicinity,
I certainly would be worried,
But also less bored.

Even if they have wings,
birds can never fly without the sky.