Ransom


I took the tree the storm had split
where the bark had been perforated
by the nest of birds whose names I couldn't put
in a journal; they were nothing
until I saw the bored holes
in the bark, that the wind broke open
like the spine of a paperback read and flung
against a magazine rack in the den.
The new wood exposed its tan, triskelion tongue
and the nest inside, tufts matted and swabbed
by the pluvial torrent that woke even me
last night. The branches left jabbed
at air like blind boxers, and now straws wedge
this poem on its splintered edge.

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