Long-vacant eyes
now lodged in clear glass,
a-swim with pale arms
as delicate as angels’ …
you are beyond all hope
of salvage now …
and yet I would pause,
no fear!,
to once touch
your arcane beaks …
I, more alien than you
to this imprismed world,
notice, most of all,
the scratches on the inside surfaces
of your hermetic cells …
and I remember documentaries
of albino Houdinis
slipping like wraiths
over the walls of shipboard aquariums,
slipping down decks’
brine-lubricated planks,
spilling jubilantly into the dark sea,
parachuting down, down through clouds of pallid ammonia …
and I know now in life you were unlike me:
your imprisonment was never voluntary.
Originally published by Triplopia
(Michael Burch)
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Based on Topics: Life Poems, World Poems, Fear PoemsBased on Keywords: delicate, angels, pause, notice, published, unlike, alien, originally, slipping, pallid, cells