If I knew anything,
like a dog's tail wags,
like an iced wire sags,
I would know a hard mouth stings.

But there in the blaze of it,
in that thick tongued moment,
when your eyes glazed on a word,
a dry twig snapped beneath a bird.

And what fell there, what broke there,
now limp in the now dry grass,
was neither a bird nor a wing,
but a foot pressed on breaking glass.