Offering

Offering 

              We are shorn
and purified, as if tonsured.
                                   Jane Kenyon

It’s swift, the quick resilience 

a thing gains when it is cut away

from blood and breathing, when its waning

container is left severed in a scuttle

or a bowl, and then, though we’d like to think not,

casually thrown or flushed or set ablaze—

where air or water or smoke

is the boat itself.  

But what drifts, though, what is

wing or air is metamorphosed,

however brief and enduring in its chrysalis, 

it unzips itself into a brand new 
air, curious and insecure.  Soon enough

a trust, those cautious spots, blend it

with the tall grass to rest, soon up and sprung,

as though from a cauldron of sound. 
The rendering is... is... liquid, reduced 

to truth.  And no one, least of all
the flown, is afraid—