A wild bird gets lost in the body,
flies through the blood and comes
to rest on an artery of the heart.
There it sings its wild song,
like a piano in the living room
that echoes through the house,
upstairs in the attic of the brain,
down in the basement where
father’s working on some project,
only looking up when he hears
a note that sounded wrong.
Meanwhile the bird warbles as if
to a mate hiding in the garden
of the liver, or caught in the narrow
passage between the kidneys.
It causes the pressure to rise
in the courtyard of the body,
making mother rush out to the
doctor’s, thinking something’s
wrong with father. His hammer
has stopped beating, his saw
grown quiet while the birds cry,
caught in one of the cages he
has been building all along.