Rizwan Akhtar

Birds

For You

They scrape and bill for answers

I peck evenings for small words 

finches and robins temper tones

 

They don’t flutter against my desires

Or rise from foggy halos

like sentences blurring intentions

 

only stare my doubts with little eyes

over ponds of petaled flowers

carrying conviction under feathers

 

a stripped choir of town’s winter

land on raven craggy earth

sank in scrimped necks


a milky whiteness of nude bodies_

clamp beaks against an urgent silence

of blue, red, and magenta quills

 

These birds I see cloister you

huddle like expressions

muted by long flights

 

They drop our histories

tied to footnotes, on vague wings.