The Geometry of Birdland by Karla Linn Merrifield

You dream you would hammer

your scorn into perfect circles

from on high like the iron wheels

of a predatory night hawk.

You would prey on any

isosceles triangle within grip,

rip it into angles of judgment

as acute as a golden eagle’s cocked eye.

Your shadow would be as a vulture’s

mean and dirty parallelogram

in the raw morning sky.

 

But, you wake instead,

the spoiled caged cockatoo,

clip-winged, inside a square

of domesticity

on a low bamboo perch

of limited horizons,

squawking white with resentment.

 

Life did not let you fly

into wild cones of power.

 

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Karla Linn Merrifield, a nine-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, has had 600+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 12 books to her credit, the newest of which is Bunchberries, More Poems of Canada, a sequel toGodwit:  Poems of Canada (FootHills), which received the Eiseman Award for Poetry. Forthcoming this fall is Psyche’s Scroll, a full-length poem, published by The Poetry Box Selects. She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye. Visit her blog, Vagabond Poe Redux, athttp://karlalinn.blogspot.com. Google her name to learn more; Tweet @LinnMerrifiel;https://www.facebook.com/karlalinn.merrifield.