Gift

Plain talk always cuts me. I’m not good.
There’s no dignity in back problems, just the chairs,
just a special way to sit,
and here, sitting.

You don’t have to look deep:
it’s in the physiology,
the half-openness like
there’s a bird in there, somewhere in the cave,
but there isn’t. There’s carpet or nothing.

I held the bird, the ghost-bird you sent me. Or
flew here of its own accord, whatever.
This is a recovery effort.