Damn you wren,
relax.
Your delicate film of
mites and feathers
clothes you,
almost fleshless under so much
abstraction,

drumming wildly like Zeus on
Leda till the brittle tiny
bones break
How in
God’s name
can I,
or even someone
caring,
re-
hab-
il-
i-
tate
this ego monster
WHO COULD FLY
like a bullet,
disdainful of blundering
mammals,
IN THE
OPEN 
AIR, JESUS!

But now is broken as
clear glass
marked down to almost nothing.
Nothing.
No one will take you
even for free.
Enslaved of fate.
Such shrill pain
squirming defiance, preferring
finality to capture by a
kindly Higher Power.

No one is your
better. No one your
equal.
nevermore.
never.

The quiet is shock
before death,
like the boy in Frost’s
poem about the chain-saw
or the car-hit
dog after he’s
screamed himself out for
a remembered mother,
lonely for her teat
at six weeks now
lost alone again
without any 
comfort in the world.
nevermore
never