Anam Cara

WINGS

For Josie

Whenever a goose was killed,

My mother got the two wings.

They were placed on the rack

Over the black Stanley range

And taken down to sweep

Around the grate and the floor.

Local women said: no matter

How you sprinkled it, every time

You’d sweep a concrete floor,

You’d get more off it.

As if, deep down,

There was only dust.

Often during sweeping,

A ray of light

Through the window

Would reveal

How empty air

Could hold a wall

Of drunken dust.

Instead of being folded around

Each side of a living body,

Embracing the warmth

And urgency of a beating heart,

The wings are broken objects now,

Rubbed and rubbed, edge down

Into an insatiable floor,

Smothered and thinned,

Until they become ghost feathers

Around a cusp of bone

Polished by motherly hand.

Never again to be disturbed

Every year by the call

Of the wild geese overhead,

Reminding them of the sky,

Urging them to raise the life

They embrace, to climb the breeze

Beyond the farm, towards horizons

That veil the green surge of the ocean.