Poem: Cockatails

 My cockatiel got out.

I was cleaning the living room window
and she shot out free in an arrow of light.
 
I ran after her,
knowing her innocence unprepared
for the rough local birds,
those packs of eagles and nest-stealing  birds
those careless rags of wind and wing
spun round in pieces

would happily shred the, 

slender perfection of my bird. 

 
I spotted her.
Just a mark in a distant tree,
Just like if painted on a tree by a painter’s thumbnail.

She was surrounded by crows calling their hate
in cries that shredded the blue air.
 
I climbed, reaching and reaching.
In my loneliness I forgot my name for a moment.
My heart fluttered and cried before words would come.
 
Then she cried out.
For me?  For the moon to appear?
In awe at a world with curves and no metal bars?
She flew to another branch, that thing with wings.
I forgot to breath (for a moment) through tears and climbed and climbed,
reaching for the shiver of sun that was her new

home.
 
She tilted her head and chirped,
And then, as if surrendering all that is loved to loss,

She fluttered into my palm as light as a sleeping child’s breathing.

As I ran home I clutched her to my heart,
feeling her heart beating in rhythm because she got to know how to hate and love hate and love. 

I was actually writing a short story with this poem, but the I realized that I could make a poem with it because it had some rymth, so I made a poem. 

Your loving explorer, 

Sidra Khan