My Sparrow
In drops you lose yourselves, yet you must dive through untold fathoms
        —Farid ud-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds

Bewilder me, You who march the feeblest Sparrow across seven cities, cathedral junkyards, Kong's last stand, No Man's Land. I have grown accustomed to yearning. Long-haul howl and wonder, as if my lost, my lonely. You impressed upon me your feather, and by and by it escaped the seventh thoracic vertebra. Sit tight. Aspens are not stunned to find themselves falling. My Sparrow—flummoxed by wind, thin as November ice, shelter here under the back porch where the bell jar is hidden. Hillocky road. Bathwater scummy from my praying. Who wouldn't love a bright God? Each difficulty one and one and one—dirigible, Palhaeo, wind's clown, bungler, jackass to a tick, picked up by the scruff, what number of one hundred difficulties before the whale draws in a breath? Still, the White Painting softens the fall. Want and seed, my ship of fools, my Duck lost in aquatic dreams, while Heron plods the empty shore, Owl living out the mad days in ruins. Sparrow, frail as hair—have you considered not existing? Over the still world, thirty birds and thirty birds. You draw in a breath of wind and eat the world.

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Copyright © 2019 Susan Austin All rights reserved
from The Cincinnati Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission