A Brief History of Strange Birds

John Sibley Williams

The transient made solid by taste that last ripe peach from a barren tree

& metaphor leafed in birds the dying tree’s fire, undiminished.

I slash the stalks at healthy angles so the flowers may drink outlast you.

Your last-ditch prayers keep their god valued & here. Between us a whipthin body of breath, greedy for life.

John Sibley Williams

A few tears to keep the dry world at bay. We can convince ourselves the sky eternity is opening burning or that permanence is a blessing. If the body is just a room within a room in the basement of some huge house, I think I remember you asking, mustn’t there be an attic, a roof, a chimney lit by winter wood? & love: the kind of love plucked from a kind of tree that doesn’t grow around here anymore wrapped in magnificent, unfamiliar birds unrequited.