Through every bone and gnaw

as if it still has feathers

is flying into their last song

the way all descent now

begins by rippling overhead

closer than the restless drone

that would become your heart

and sunlight, louder and louder

devouring the Earth whole

–you chew on engine sounds

already those same shadows

that end in the terrifying shape

used to this day for plates

rounded so nothing falls off

except wings and branches

and these tiny stones you eat

from the forehead spread across

to dry your hands and remember.

SIMON PERCHIK is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Rosenblum Poems published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.