These days, I lean into darkness: ten times
over, I sing madrigals, sign cards. Sweet times
find their vowels in birds’ wings, radial syntax
of carpus, metacarpus, alula. Digits of times
I’ve watched them brighten, spin—the clock’s
a scattered sparrow, keeled for seeds, nine times
out of ten finding none—now, the muscles used
for flight unhinge and falter, tiny bones mark times
the eye’s looked low, the skull’s aspects unfuse,
whistles hasten from hollow bones. Lean times
sliver off the intertarsal joint, synsacrum, coracoid
and scapula, wishbone. Birds I’ve seen in times
of drowning appear flightless—winged birds shift
weight, bellow air into dead space. Even times
of grief glimmer in sternums, elongate the ossified
unknowns. I shiver: amniotic fluid marks times
of birth, of exit (dappled, arrowing). If I’m here
to witness, I will brave it, singe and land ten times
over ice, past stone. Words halve tongues: dark
nights double up, weightless, lacking teeth. Times
for weeping coincide with danger: gardens, beaks
hide the spent arrival of flames. I’ve wiped times
tables from my mind, razorbills from my repertoire—
each day, I wake to scales, claws, spurs. If times
of hundred miles, of hope, are left unfinished, don’t
think migration’s forgotten for good. Echo times
of gliding, hasten on spring: I’ll fast forget (caudial,
cranial) this sightline, these shell-hatching times.
