~KWAME DAWES~

AMONG THE DITHERING FEATHERS

---

There is providence in a sparrow’s fall
but around me here in the vacant
parking lot of Kohl’s, it is snowing
the feathers of gulls, a plague of them
rising raucously into the dull sky;
the smell of beached fish
in the air though we are ninety miles
from the sea. I have been losing hold
of dreams of late; something tells
me that they are rank with prophecy.

This morning the freight train rattling
along Two Notch Road shook me up.
My throat flamed with words half-
spoken. I waited for the settling
of the dream into a language
I could recollect. Nothing.  Now
among the dithering feathers,
the chill of a slow dawn, I sense
the weight of sight; a truth
caught in the fantastic chaos
of this moment. Still, nothing;
just a sliver of some old dead
poet’s musing, something about
divinities, ends, providence
and the bodies strewn in a hall
fetid as a mist-filled battlefield.

© by Kwame Dawes