Clear Writing

Awake 

Waking in an aviary: I hear birds
following instructions in the cheap manual,
saying their syllables,
adding unrecorded sibilants to avoid identification,
no check-mark on the life-list of an armchair birder
who listens into leaves inside the constructed forest.

Dozing into translation:
the message is not for me,
eavesdropping on captured nature, not
let us out or let us in,
just what the small throats have to say
before their bodies rise again
to bat against the netting’s screen of sky.

Rising through reverie: awaking
to the dome above
the floor beneath
the what-to-say
between.

Ellen McCulloch-Lovell