Birds Live in Baskets

photo by Lacey Lampe

A mystic will say at the dawn of the day

that meat is a marvelous medium.

So what better way than inhabiting clay

to take flight from a Heaven of tedium?

Here, where we face the illusory fray

into which we have weaved and been woven,

we agree once again to make magic from pain

emerging from caul into coven.

Birds live in baskets. You might have seen

them foraging relics in strata of dream,

threshing and rolling the symbols (a weave)

into wondrous wares we can give and receive.

To thrive without borders, we scavenge debris,

and invest in material reverently

so we can build baskets, invoke pedigrees

to lend us our backbones (roots, family trees).

Arising to bird song each early morn,

we awake from the womb of our slumber, reborn

as the dead and their dirges sound off in horns

(thighbones) and drums beat where hearts do no more.

Birds gather treasures from strata of myth,
imagining baskets, building with bliss.
The firmament reigns, but birds, they persist

in weaving the sky out of clouds made of mist.

Death is the door through which everything passes,

so let's raise our glasses, our urns, and our ashes

to birds in their nests, in their beautiful baskets,

weaving their wares and retrieving their caches! 

Here, where we face the illusory fray

into which we have weaved and been woven,

we agree once again to make magic from pain

emerging from caul into coven.

A mystic will say at the end of the day,

that meat devolves into delirium.

So what better way than quitting the clay

to remember our magical medium?