Kate Maxwell
Fall of the Ratites
How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn!
Isaiah 14:12-13
Lost my strong pectoral muscles
generations past
soaring through mountain mists
heaven in my heart
breath of blue, all but a tingle
in the flap and flutter
of these heavy useless wings
and upward yearnings.
Of stones and dirt, not wind and clouds
these broad fat feet will claw
and search, eyes down
roosting into gravity
with stoic resignation
obligated surety
that we remain sustained
since earthbound and enlarged.
Weighed down with the heft of durability
thick bodied, tough skinned
and breastbone now too flat
to use as keel: I pause
in my pedestrian foraging
scan unending skies
to watch those of us still
able-winged and hollow-boned
hover and sail as they touch
edges of forever with their feathered
tips and lighter souls.
Down here in the dirt
squinting into sun and splendour
their aerial abandon
still whispers to my armless torso
once, you also soared.