Found Objects

Found Objects

I'm a widow now, and my dreams fill
with a strange sort of flight. No lift beyond
the tree tops really, and I wake with muscles sore.

The feather he knifed into a quill,
made me promise to scribble love letters
when he was long-haul trucking.

But the black feather split, left nothing
but smudges and blots. Two hawk feathers
gathered up in Colorado, a fence-cut sapling

bent into a dream catcher, but the contraption
moved oddly in the dark, twisted up
my sleep, drained the color from the morning sky.

A sad collection of headdresses, beaded
flapper belts, a slow accumulation of haphazard
feathers from crow, blue jay, cardinal, and titmouse.

I kept them for his love, imagined
his thick and clumsy fingers constructing charms
in the dark cab of his truck, down time hours

swirling back to me. I keep them in a box
beneath our bed, one owl feather found on a walk
I've tacked to the bird's-eye headboard.

His presence has found its way back home,
spins like a feather above the bed, chases dreams
away before their natural ends, small sounds
attacking the windows, trees full of restless birds.